Biel Bursts Into Life
Rounds 7 and 8 at the Biel GM tournament finally saw some potentially decisive breaks from the pack in this 6-player, 10 round event.
The main beneficiary is 18 year-old Frenchman Maxime Vachier-Lagrave (pictured) who comfortably outplayed Caruana's Berlin defence in round 7 and then took advantage of another Morozevich implosion to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat in round 8.
So Maxime is now the joint leader with Ivanchuk on 5/8, and Caruana drops down to joint last after losing to Chucky in round 8.
One other decisive game to catch up with occurred when poor Gelfand blew another nice position by missing a relatively straightforward tactic (time trouble perhaps?) to lose to Morozevich - again.
The standings after round 7:
| Vachier-Lagrave, Maxime | FRA | 2703 | 5 |
| Ivanchuk, Vassily | UKR | 2703 | 5 |
| Alekseev, Evgeny | RUS | 2714 | 4 |
| Morozevich, Alexander | RUS | 2751 | 4 |
| Gelfand, Boris | ISR | 2755 | 3 |
| Caruana, Fabiano | ITA | 2670 | 3 |
Feeling Moro(se?) Morozevich blew a winning game against Vachier-Lagrave (pic from the official site)
