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 seven

An indomitable will to win, and a small dose of luck, were what it took to move Magnus Carlsen to the top of the leaderboard after watching Wang Hao and Anish Giri hoard the spotlight for most of the tournament. Admittedly he was handicapped by having a game less in his total, but that was rectified on Sunday when he finally took on Viktor Bologan, duly winning the missing game.

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In round seven he faced the leader Wang Hao, who had been having a magnificent tournament, with only a single stain on his record: his loss to Carlsen in the first half. Much like the Grand Slam Finals last year, where he had caught Ivanchuk by beating him twice, he pulled off a second win after an oversight by the Chinese player which put Wang Hao in the hot seat, and eventually cost the game.

A pleased Carlsen was in a mood that no one could shake him from

This second straight win brought him to the same score as Wang Hao, but with a better tiebreak.

Magnus Carlsen shows his game against Wang Hao

Viktor Bologan faced Etienne Bacrot’s King’s Indian and it was a fascinating struggle, but as some may know, Bologan has authored more than one work on the opening, including a detailed ChessBase DVD, so he was more than comfortable facing it. He was unable to get more than a lingering edge though and the players drew.

Viktor Bologan had strong opinions on the opening and the game

Etienne Bacrot and Viktor Bologan analyze their game  

Anish Giri gave Hikaru Nakamura a hard time as they played a Semi-Slav he was better prepared for. The American GM fought back by taking very energetic measures, an approach Giri agreed with in the post-mortem, but even so had a number of issues to resolve before he could acquit himself with the draw.

Despite the peaceful result, their game was one of the most interesting of the round

Anish Giri had his chances, but Hikaru Nakamura was up to the task and fought back  

Traditional standings after seven rounds

Three-point standings after seven 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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