The 2012 Biel Chess Festival is taking place from July 23rd to August 2nd, 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, Hikaru Nakamura, Alex. Morozevich, Wang Hao, Etienne Bacrot and Anish Giri.

Hikaru Nakamura, Etienne Bacrot, Magnus Carlsen, Wang Hao, Anish Giri and Alex Morozevich

The rate of play: 40 moves in 100 minutes, then 20 moves in 50 minutes followed by 15 minutes 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 two

If you thought the action would slow in round two, think again. The first game to end was the tense battle between Hikaru Nakamura and Anish Giri. Hikaru’s queen penetrated the queenside, but was under constant danger of being harried by Giri’s rooks. He solved the problem by exchanging it off, but the ensuing position held no winning chances for either and they shook hands.

Anish Giri presents his thoughts during the post-mortem

Nakamura has his doubts

Giri and Nakamura review their tussle. It is reassuring to see even the players unsure.
Namakura: "Either I'm much better, or Anish is completely fine."

The wildest game by far was between Etienne Bacrot and Alexander Morozevich. The opening looked especially strange considering the players. Its extremely double-edged nature, involving multiple pawn sacrifices would look perfectly normal were it the Russian doing the sacrificing, but it was the other way around! Bacrot later explained that he had known the line could turn up, but preparing against such a maverick made it impossible to truly cover the bases and he spent enormous amounts of time trying to calculate his way out of the maze.

If the game was a rollercoaster for the audience, imagine what it was like for the players,
yet Etienne Bacrot kept his cool and was rewarded in the end.

When he was down three pawns, it seemed clear he would be fortunate to walk away with a draw, but in mutual time trouble, Morozevich became overly optimistic and suddenly was lost. Bacrot played the end to perfection, even finding a ‘cool move’ as he describes in the post-mortem (and it was a cool move) not to mention his lovely coup de grace ending the game in beauty.

Etienne Bacrot analyzes his game in the post-mortem  

Magnus Carlsen came alone to the post-mortem, which was followed live by the hordes
on Playchess. It can be viewed by Premium subscribers in the commentary channel by Klaus Bischoff.

The last game to end was Magnus Carlsen against Wang Hao. Wang Hao, who had enjoyed a completely misplayed opening by his opponent in the first round, made a mess of his own opening against Carlsen, far from ideal against the strongest player alive. Somehow he never managed to regain his equilibrium and he followed this up by various weakening moves around his kingside that soon saw the Norwegian’s pieces swarming around it. The pressure mounted and he buckled, unable to keep his position together.

Wang Hao did exchange notes with Carlsen though

And Magnus then exchanged notes with his personal manager, Henrik Carlsen (dad)

Magnus Carlsen explains for the last ten years he has felt Black's line to be a mistake

Traditional standings after two rounds

Three-point standings after two rounds

Pictures by Pascal Simon

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. In addition Yasser Seirawan is doing round-up shows at 8:00 p.m. on the days he is commenting.

Commentary schedule

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.

• You can watch the live coverage of Biel 2012 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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