Biel, Round 4: Kamsky and Gelfand draw

Kamsky leads the main event

Two legends met yesterday at the Biel Chess Festival: Gata Kamsky and Boris Gelfand, both former World Championship runners-up and World Cup winners. With a draw, Kamsky defended his lead in the tournament ranking. The new first chaser is the Frenchman Lagarde, who overtook Alekseenko with a win. Keymer was also victorious, as the German defeated the Argentine Pichot. Noël Studer and Nihal Sarin drew.

Yesterday in Biel, there was a replay of the semi-final of the 2011 Candidates’ Tournament: Boris Gelfand had then beaten Gata Kamsky in the tie-break blitz, before beating Grischuk in the final, thus qualifying to challenge, in 2012, the then reigning world champion Viswanathan Anand. While Kamsky was unable to exact revenge today, he should not be unhappy with a draw that puts him in the 3½ points ahead of the runner-up in the overall standings.

The flexible Open Spanish

In this opening Black opts for active piece play and is not afraid to fight for the initiative from an early stage. One of the many good features of this opening is that Black is often the side which controls the pace of the game.

The playing hall

Frenchman Maxime Lagarde is the new runner-up behind Kamsky. Lagarde won the direct duel with Kamsky’s previous rival, Kirill Alekseenko, as the Russian, who was better at times, made decisive mistakes in time trouble. Like Lagarde, Vincent Keymer also won his first classical game in round 4. Against Alan Pichot, he managed to steadily build up his position and then safely convert it into a win.

Vincent Keymer

After his opening defeat, Nihal Sarin drew for the third time in a row on Friday. Inspired by his victory in the previous round, Noël Studer, playing with white, got a good position, but the Indian managed to hold the draw.

Overall standings

Master Class Vol. 12: Viswanathan Anand

This DVD allows you to learn from the example of one of the best players in the history of chess and from the explanations of the authors how to successfully organise your games strategically, and how to keep your opponent permanently under pressure.

All games - Classical

Masters Tournament

The Master Tournament saw two top duels among 2600+ rated players: Karthikeyan Murali, playing with black, defeated top seed Salem Saleh to take the lead with 4½ points, while young Indian star Praggnanandhaa drew with his compatriot Surya Shekhar Ganguly, which means both have so far collected 4 points in the tournament. Also on 4 points after 5 rounds are Tamas Banusz from Hungary, Pavel Eljanov from Ukraine and Sethuraman S.P. from India.

Saturday is a rest day in the Masters Tournament.

Current standings - Top 20

The Ruy Lopez Breyer Variation

Pavel Eljanov explains in depth what Gyula Breyer already saw in 1911 and what became an opening choice of the likes of Kasparov, Kramnik, Anand or Carlsen. The Breyer Variation, which is characterised by the knight retreat to b8.

...73 players

All games

Links

• Official site
• More info at Chess-Results