Biel Rd.9: Caruana beats Morozevich, Carlsen wins Biel 2011

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, Maximee Vachier-Lagrave, Alexei Shirov, Fabiano Caruana, Alexander Morozevich and Yannick Pelletier.

The participants: Caruana, Pelletier, Shirov, Carlsen, Morozevich, Vachier-Lagrave

The rate of play: two 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.

Magnus Carlsen’s game against Maxime Vachier-Lagrave was the most exciting of them all, and Vachier-Lagrave tried very hard to press any psychological edge he might have against Carlsen. They played a Fianchetto Gruenfeld, which unfolded to a blocked center with play focused on the queenside. Carlsen had a pleasant advantage until Qc1, after which he himself had to play accurately. However, for the first 45 moves the Frenchman had no counterchances and was just trying to hold. Finally Lagrave played f5, g5 and g4 as a form of active defence, since the alternative was to be run over on the kingside by White. Both players refocused their forces and again neither player managed to trip the other. In the end, the draw was well deserved.

The question was also whether Alexander Morozevich would be able to challenge Magnus Carlsen for the top spot, as his opponents were theoretically easier on paper. Not so much via rating since Caruana is roughly the same rating as Vachier-Lagrave, but because Caruana had had a bad event so far and was most likely quite vulnerable. Reality turned out otherwise however, as Caruana played a very fine Semi-Slav, and handled the complex middlegame extremely well. His queenside pawns mobilized quicker than Morozevich was able to handle, and the endgame soon became untenable. With his loss, Carlsen became the de facto winner of Biel, one round in advance.

Alexei Shirov and Yannick Pelletier played a solid game, which ended in a draw, and was understandably overshadowed by the other two boards where the championship’s top prize was on the line.

Standings

Live GM commentary on Playchess

There is live audio and video commentary on the chess server Playchess. The English commentary starts at 3:30 p.m., and German commentary directly from the playing site begins at 4:00 p.m.

As a special treat the multimedia commentary live from Biel is also available in our live browser coverage. This also includes the players analysing after their games.

• You can watch the live coverage of Biel 2011 in your browser here

Overview: schedule and results

Links Official tournament site All games in PGN 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.

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