7/23/2011 – Magnus Carlsen's stratospheric cruise over the tournament in Biel was brought to a crashing stop by French GM Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, who showed remarkable perspicacity and patience in grinding down the world's number one in 96 moves. Alexander Morozevich refuted the "rule of the fist" and beat Fabiano Caruana to close up to the tournament leader. Full report with postgame interviews.
new: ChessBase Magazine 225
Chess Festival Prague 2025 with analyses by Aravindh, Giri, Gurel, Navara and others. ‘Special’: 27 highly entertaining miniatures. Opening videos by Werle, King and Ris. 10 opening articles with new repertoire ideas and much more. ChessBase Magazine offers first-class training material for club players and professionals! World-class players analyse their brilliant games and explain the ideas behind the moves. Opening specialists present the latest trends in opening theory and exciting ideas for your repertoire. Master trainers in tactics, strategy and endgames show you the tricks and techniques you need to be a successful tournament player! Available as a direct download (incl. booklet as pdf file) or booklet with download key by post. Included in delivery: ChessBase Magazine #225 as “ChessBase Book” for iPad, tablet, Mac etc.!
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In this video course, Grandmaster Ivan Sokolov explores the fascinating world of Dutch and Grünfelkd structures with colours reversed.
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The
2011 Biel Chess Festival is taking place from July 16 to 29, in a number of
groups: the Master Tournament (eleven rounds Swiss); the Main Tournament (nine
rounds Swiss); a Rapid and a Blitz tournament; Chess960; Youth, Simultaneous,
Chess Tennis, ChessBase training seminars. Of greatest interest is of course
the Accentus Grandmaster Tournament with six very strong grandmasters playing
a double round robin: Magnus Carlsen, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, Alexei
Shirov, Fabiano Caruana, Alexander Morozevich and Yannick Pelletier.
The participants: Caruana, Pelletier, Shirov, Carlsen, Morozevich, Vachier-Lagrave
The rate of play: 2 hours for 40 moves, then one hour for 20 and 15 min for
the rest of the game, with 30 sec increment per move. The scoring system is
three points for a win, one for a draw and zero for a loss. No draw offers are
permitted before move 30.
Round 5: Saturday, July 23, 14:00h
Maxime Vachier
1-0
Magnus Carlsen
Fabiano Caruana
½-½
Alex. Morozevich
Yannick Pelletier
0-1
Alexei Shirov
A computer he is not. We knew this last year when Magnus Carlsen suffered from
strange losses, but when he is in form you only expect to hear alternating tales
of his wonderful wins and the inevitable draws. Frenchman Maxime Vachier-Lagrave,
who had hoped to leave a more lasting mark than just his name in the crosstable,
has already done just that by soundly beating Carlsen while the latter was high
in the stratosphere above planet chess. Carlsen was Black in a Sicilian Rossolimo,
and the game took on a very closed character, with a giant crater on d5 but
all the pawns and heavy pieces on the board. Whether or not it could have been
defended will be up to the analysts to determine, but if it could, the world
number one failed to find how. Though the game took nearly 100 moves, Maxime
slowly crept forward, working not one, not two, but three weaknesses while Magnus
tried to patch the holes of his sinking ship. In the end, the Titanic could
not be saved.
Every rule has its exceptions and Alexander Morozevich showed
Fabiano Caruana just such a case. The rule isn’t one you will find in
books on strategy, but there is a popular chess adage called the ‘rule
of the fist’ which says that if a single player has a cluster of pieces
tight enough to occupy the space of a fist, usually four or more pieces, he
is in big trouble. After fourteen moves, Morozevich had exactly that but it
was his opponent who was in big trouble. After benefiting from a gift from
Vachier-Lagrave in round two, and so far unable to show the form that had
led him to crush the Russian Championship Higher League, this was his best
performance. Even though his advantage seemed to be in danger of disappearing,
it never quite did, and he pushed forward to a fine win in 52 moves moving
to clear second.
Swiss grandmaster Yannick Pelletier has to be pleased with at
least one thing: despite being the bottom of the tournament ranking list he
is not last by any margin. It is not uncommon for local players, benefiting
from a chance to gain experience against the elite to find the process to be
as brutal as instructive. The lessons are learned, but at the cost of any chess
ego they had prior, but here he has managed very well against such a hard field,
and in his game against Shirov, he was never in any danger as he held the draw.
Scoring system: a win counts as three points, a draw as one and a loss
zero. In the traditional scoring system, which we assume will apply when calculating
the ratings, the tournament table at halftime would look like this:
Live GM commentary and interviews on Playchess
During the games of the Biel Chess Festival there is live commentary –
by GM Miso Cebalo in German and GMs like Danny King, Jan Gustafsson or Jan Smeets
in English. After the games are over the players come to the stage where Cebalo
analyses the moves with them (in English). These are particularly interesting
sessions, since the proponents have everything still fresh in their minds, and
are in fact exploring, in real time, what happened just minutes ago.
All this is available to a world-wide audience on Playchess
and with a normal Internet browser on our special Chesslive
broadcast page. In this report we show you the postgame interviews as video
captures. At the end of the report you will find a PGN file to download and
analyse yourself, assisted by your favourite chess engine.
Opened up the tournament by beating Carlsen: French GM Maxime Vachier-Lagrave
Hard on Carlsen's heels: Russian GM Alexander Morozevich
Swiss GM Yannick Pelletier and Spanish GM Alexei Shirov analysing in Playchess
As a special treat the multimedia commentary live from Biel is also available
on our live browser coverage. This also includes the players analysing after
their games.
The games are being broadcast live on the official web site and on the
chess server Playchess.com.
If you are not a member you can download a free Playchess client there
and get immediate access. You can also use ChessBase
11 or any of our Fritz
compatible chess programs.
In this course, you’ll learn how to take the initiative against the London and prevent White from comfortably playing their usual system by playing 1.d4 Nf6 2.Bf4 Nh5.
London System Powerbase 2026 is a database and contains in all 11 285 games from Mega 2026 and the Correspondence Database 2026, of which 282 are annotated.
The London System Powerbook 2026 is based on more than 410 000 games or game fragments from different opening moves and ECO codes; what they all have in common is that White plays d4 and Bf4 but does not play c4.
In this course, Grandmaster Elisabeth Pähtz presents the London System, a structured and ambitious approach based on the immediate Bf4, leading to rich and dynamic positions.
Opening videos: Open Spanish (Sipke Ernst) and Classical Sicilian (Nico Zwirs). Endgame Special by Igor Stohl: ‘Short or long side’ – where should the defending king be placed in rook endgames? ‘Lucky bag’ with 35 master analyses.
YOUR EASY ACCESS TO OPENING THEORY: Whether you want to build up a reliable and powerful opening repertoire or find new opening ideas for your existing repertoire, the Opening Encyclopaedia covers the entire opening theory on one product.
The Queen’s Gambit Declined Exchange Variation with 5.Bf4 has a great balance between positional play and sharp pawn pushes; and will be a surprise for your opponents while being easy to learn for you, as the key patterns are familiar.
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