Biel R8: Navara Beats Rapport, Catches Wojtaszek In 1st Place

GM David Navara caught GM Radek Wojtaszek in first place by beating GM Richard Rapport as Black in round eight of the Biel Chess Festival's Grandmaster Tournament. 

The 48th Biel Chess Festival remains exciting until the very end. The two leaders, Wojtaszek and Navara, are “only” on plus two and just one player is doing clearly worse than expected: Richard Rapport.

It was David Navara who profited from this on Tuesday, with a relatively easy win against the Hungarian.

“I'm happy that I managed to win,” said Navara. “I realized I needed to win some games to score plus two, which was my objective, which was my aim.

“Basically I saw Richard was out of form. I'm sure that if he were in a good form he would have achieved a better result. But he was out of form and I managed to exploit this. You know, I'm a player who usually performs well against the opponents who are currently out of form!”

Maxime Vachier-Lagrave kept his hopes alive to win Biel for the fourth time. The French number-one won an excellent game against Michael Adams in a main line Marshall Ruy Lopez — an opening we haven't seen for a while at this level.

The modern approach for White is to give back the gambit pawn quickly and hope for an advantage based on the bishop pair. This is basically what happened in the game; Black's knight especially looked rather helpless on the queenside.

“I was just trying to get something out of the opening, which is not so easy,” said MVL. “Well, I didn't get much but I managed to build up some pressure, which was probably decisive.”

Annotations by GM Dejan Bojkov

The longest game of the round was Pavel Eljanov vs Radek Wojtaszek, and the tournament leader was shaking there. Eljanov managed to keep his opening advantage in a Ragozin and was better throughout the game, but it's not clear if it was winning anywhere. 

A long and tough defense for Wojtaszek. | Photo Biel Chess Festival.

GM Rustam Kasimdzhanov is providing daily round reports on the PowerPlayChess YouTube channel. Here's the video on the eighth round:

Wednesday's ninth round will see Richard Rapport vs Pavel Eljanov, David Navara vs Maxime Vachier-Lagrave and Michael Adams vs Radoslaw Wojtaszek.

2015 Biel GM Tournament | Round 8 Standings

#	Name	Rtg	Perf	1	2	3	4	5	6	Pts	SB
1	Wojtaszek,R	2733	2802		0	½1	½	1½	½1	5.0/8	17.00
2	Navara,D	2724	2805	1		½	00	1½	11	5.0/8	16.50
3	Vachier Lagrave,M	2731	2767	½0	½		11	½½	½	4.5/8
4	Adams,Mi	2740	2714	½	11	00		0	½1	4.0/8
5	Eljanov,P	2723	2680	0½	0½	½½	1		½	3.5/8
6	Rapport,R	2671	2541	½0	00	½	½0	½		2.0/8

The 48th Biel Chess Festival takes place July 18-30 in Biel, Switzerland. The Grandmaster Tournament is a double-round-robin with six players. The rounds start at 2 p.m. CET (8 a.m. New York, 5 a.m. Pacific) and can be watched live here or in the Chess.com live server. Games via TWIC