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 six

The stage

Saying round six was the quietest round of the tournament would only mean there was only a single decisive game as opposed to the two out of three the players have been spoiling the spectators with. In truth the only game that could really be called ‘quiet’ would be the uneventful draw between Hikaru Nakamura and Magnus Carlsen. So much so that the players themselves dispensed with the video post-mortem, declaring it nothing special and not worth it.

Etienne Bacrot and Wang Hao played a Gruenfeld that seemed ready to swing decisively one way or the other, but never quite teetered far enough, and they too drew.

Etienne Bacrot and Wang Hao joke during the post-mortem

Viktor Bologan, who has struggled to do better than the player he is replacing,  came up empty-handed after Anish Giri took advantage of imprecise opening play. Though he fought valiantly, it was a disappointing result once more for the Moldavian grandmaster who nevertheless deserves credit for always coming to the post-mortem, and always giving his time, showing the utmost professionalism through and through.

Etienne Bacrot and Wang Hao enlighten the audience on their game  

Anish Giri is climbing the ranks as fast as he can to show that his momentary lapse
of rating was just that: momentary.

For Giri, this not only meant he broke the deadlock between Nakamura and himself for second, but he is already looking at a full 30 Elo jump by next list thanks not only to his superb result so far, but his crushing victory at the Dutch Championship that ended just before Biel started.

Traditional standings after six rounds

Three-point standings after six 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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