Biel R6: Carlsen beats Pelletier, increases lead
Magnus Carlsen started the second half of the Biel Chess Festival with a win against Yannick Pelletier. The Norwegian increased his lead in the standings to three points as both Vachier-Lagrave vs Caruana and Morozevich vs Shirov ended in draws. ChessVibes is in Biel!General info
The 44th Biel Chess Festival takes place July 16-29 in Biel, Switzerland. The 'Grandmaster Tournament' is a six-player, double round robin with Caruana, Pelletier, Shirov, Carlsen, Morozevich and Vachier-Lagrave.The rate of play is 2 hours for 40 moves, then 1 hour for 20 moves and then 15 minutes to finish the game, with 30 seconds increment from move 61. The 'football' scoring system is in effect: three points for a win, one for a draw and zero for a loss. Besides, no draw offers are permitted before move 30. More info here.Round 6
ChessVibes is in Biel! This morning the author of these sentences hopped on an ICE train in Amsterdam, changed in Frankfurt and Basel, and arrived in Biel, well, basically just when the 6th round had finished. :-)Everything went quite smooth, except for the fact that I forgot to pack my laptop adapter. Ouch. Already making plans to drop by the local MediaMarkt on Tuesday morning to buy a far too expensive and soon-to-be superfluous second one, I met a friend who lent me his adapter for the coming days. Phew!While chatting in front of the train station, we bumped into Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, who was on his way to a restaurant with a group of friends. They had a stack of 'French playing cards' with them (whatever the difference might be), so they wouldn't get bored tonight.Not long afterwards I also met with Magnus Carlsen on the street. The Norwegian, also joined by some friends, was wearing a very casual outfit with shorts. I concluded that his game had been over for a while already, and asked for the result. "I won, but I didn't play well," Magnus said.And indeed, Carlsen's play against Pelletier wasn't too convincing for the first twenty moves or so. Pelletier was doing fine, but then erred in the ending.Carlsen-Pelletier Biel, 2011
24. b5!
Giving Black the opportunity to go wrong...
24... Rd1+?!
...and he does. 24... axb5 25. Be3 Na4 26. Rc1 Rd1+ 27. Rxd1 Bxd1 28. Bd4 is a bit annoying for Black but 24... Bd3 should draw.
25. Kf2 axb5 26. Bxb7 f5?!
Unnecessarily weakening the king's position. 26... h6 was better.
27.Bf3 Rd8 28. Ra5 fxg4 29. Bxg4 Bd3 30. Be6+ Kh8 31. b3 h6 32. Bb2
The bishop came to life and the game was decided quickly afterwards.
Commentator GM Miso Cebalo rightfully asked for an applause before Morozevich and Shirov started their post-mortem (see the video below). The game was absolutely fantastic to watch. We've added lots of variations to the game in the viewer below, which is based on this post-mortem and here and there on the computer's opinion. Awesome stuff! (Objectively speaking Shirov was lost for a few moves, but Caissa decided to reward his creative play with half a point.)
The game between Vachier-Lagrave and Caruana seemed to explode around the same time, with an interesting piece sacrifice from the Frenchman, but unfortunately this game ended abruptly with a move repetition. Well, you can't have it all - it was a wonderful round anyway.
Tomorrow I'll start doing some videos and I'll shoot some pics too. Good to be here!Games round 6
Game viewer by ChessTempoVideos by Chessbase
| Round 1 | 18.07.11 | 14:00 CET | Round 6 | 25.07.11 | 14:00 CET | |
| Caruana | ½-½ | Vachier-Lagrave | Vachier-Lagrave | ½-½ | Caruana | |
| Pelletier | 0-1 | Carlsen | Carlsen | 1-0 | Pelletier | |
| Shirov | ½-½ | Morozevich | Morozevich | ½-½ | Shirov | |
| Round 2 | 19.07.11 | 14:00 CET | Round 7 | 26.07.11 | 14:00 CET | |
| Vachier-Lagrave | 0-1 | Morozevich | Morozevich | - | Vachier-Lagrave | |
| Carlsen | 1-0 | Shirov | Shirov | - | Carlsen | |
| Caruana | ½-½ | Pelletier | Pelletier | - | Caruana | |
| Round 3 | 20.07.11 | 14:00 CET | Round 8 | 27.07.11 | 14:00 CET | |
| Pelletier | ½-½ | Vachier-Lagrave | Vachier-Lagrave | - | Pelletier | |
| Shirov | 1-0 | Caruana | Caruana | - | Shirov | |
| Morozevich | ½-½ | Carlsen | Carlsen | - | Morozevich | |
| Round 4 | 22.07.11 | 14:00 CET | Round 9 | 28.07.11 | 14:00 CET | |
| Shirov | ½-½ | Vachier-Lagrave | Carlsen | - | Vachier-Lagrave | |
| Morozevich | ½-½ | Pelletier | Morozevich | - | Caruana | |
| Carlsen | 1-0 | Caruana | Shirov | - | Pelletier | |
| Round 5 | 23.07.11 | 14:00 CET | Round 10 | 29.07.11 | 11:00 CET | |
| Vachier-Lagrave | 1-0 | Carlsen | Vachier-Lagrave | - | Shirov | |
| Caruana | 0-1 | Morozevich | Pelletier | - | Morozevich | |
| Pelletier | ½-½ | Shirov | Caruana | - | Carlsen |
| # | Name | Elo | Points | |
| 1. | Magnus Carlsen | NOR | 2821 | 13 |
| 2. | Alexander Morozevich | RUS | 2694 | 10 |
| 3-4. | Maxime Vachier-Lagrave | FRA | 2722 | 7 |
| 3-4. | Alexei Shirov | ESP | 2714 | 7 |
| 5. | Yannick Pelletier | SUI | 2590 | 4 |
| 6. | Fabiano Caruana | ITA | 2711 | 3 |
Photos © Biel Chess Festival
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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.”
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