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 four

Etienne Bacrot and Magnus Carlsen

Despite the missing game, many expected Magnus Carlsen to start his romp towards the title, but it was put on hold today when his game against Etienne Bacrot that had turned to his advantage had an unexpected development. It had seemed virtually certain that Magnus would win the exchange by promoting his pawn and then start his long squeeze. Instead he went for a line that won the full piece, except for one problem: after winning the piece in a1 his knight would be trapped and captured. As a result, a few moves later, the game was drawn.

Bacrot and Carlsen analyze their game  

The encounter of the day was unquestionably between the two leaders, Anish Giri and Wang Hao. Anish chose to play the Saemisch against Hao’s King’s Indian, but this time the Chinese player’s knowledge turned to be the deeper as he found himself in a line he was an expert in. Things soon became complicated and after a couple of mistakes, White was faced with a lost endgame. As a result, Wang Hao scored his third win and took the lead, bearing in mind that in Biel each win is worth three points.

An elated Wang Hao is now the leader at Biel

Wang Hao analyzes his game with Bischoff, and also explains about his name  

The last game to end was certainly the oddest and most chaotic. Viktor Bologan found himself down the exchange in a quiet queenless middlegame against Hikaru Nakamura, but it seemed destined to drift into a draw. Instead the American began to push and push, and as is often the case in such circumstances, this backfired and he got into a difficult position which even yielded winning chances for White. At precisely this moment, the Moldavian went astray and not only blundered his way back to an equal position but tragically all the way to a mate against his king.

Bologan is the hero of the tournament, coming in on no notice to replace Morozevich
and allow the event to continue.

Traditional standings after four rounds

Three-point standings after four 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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