Biel R4: Caruana beats Morozevich
Fabiano Caruana defeated tournament leader Alexander Morozevich in the 4th round in Biel, and so a draw with Boris Gelfand was enough for Vassily Ivanchuk to catch the Russian in the standings.
The Biel Chess Festival takes place July 18 to 31 in Biel, Switzerland. The Grandmaster Tournament is a six-player round-robin with Gelfand (2755), Morozevich (2751), Alekseev (2714), Vachier-Lagrave (2703), Ivanchuk (2703) and Caruana (2670).Round 4
And suddenly the tournament was fully open again, with everything to play for. Fabiano Caruana, the 5th strongest player in the world under 20, beat tournament leader and world's number 10 Alexander Morozevich in a game that started as a relatively quiet Grünfeld but then suddenly turned into a raging French bushfire.At first it seemed like Morozevich was giving his young opponent a lesson in positional play, blocking White's d-pawn thematically by regrouping his knight to d6. After some manoeuvering from both sides it was the Russian GM who decided to take the gamble and go for the full point with the pawn sac 44...h5!? 45.gxh5 f5 but Caruana was fully aware of his chances and combining defence and attack he then out-calculated his world-class opponent. Impressive play by the Italian.Vachier-Lagrave didn't feel like a Berlin Wall against Alekseev, but the Frenchman got less than nothing with his 4.d3 and a draw was agreed at move 19. Ivanchuk and Gelfand fought a bit longer but the opposite-coloured bishops middlegame seemed pretty drawish from the start.And so after four rounds Morozevich and Ivanchuk are sharing first place with 2.5 points. Guess who are playing each other in round 5!Games round 4
Click on the pairings at the top of the board to reveal a drop down list of all the games. Click on the arrow under the board just once, then the arrow keys of your keyboard also work. Silverlight works on all browsers and platforms except for Linux, but this should be fixed soon. Contact us for questions, not in the comments section, please.
Biel Chess Festival 2009 | Schedule & results
Links
Peter Doggers joined a chess club a month before turning 15 and still plays for it. He used to be an active tournament player and holds two IM norms. Peter has a Master of Arts degree in Dutch Language & Literature. He briefly worked at New in Chess, then as a Dutch teacher and then in a project for improving safety and security in Amsterdam schools. Between 2007 and 2013 Peter was running ChessVibes, a major source for chess news and videos acquired by Chess.com in October 2013. As our Director News & Events, Peter writes many of our news reports. In the summer of 2022, The Guardian’s Leonard Barden described him as “widely regarded as the world’s best chess journalist.”
Peter's first book The Chess Revolution is out now!
Company Contact and News Accreditation:
Email: peter@chess.com FOR SUPPORT PLEASE USE chess.com/support!
Phone: 1 (800) 318-2827
Address: 877 E 1200 S #970397, Orem, UT 84097
