Evgeny Alekseev Wins Biel!

Dominguez Loses Out In Dramatic Tie-Break

Tie-breaks are an exciting and dramatic way of deciding the winner of a sporting event, but whoever loses is likely to have a different opinion immediately after the event!

Leinier Dominguez of Cuba stumbled in his last round game against Etienne Bacrot, who nurtured his small advantage in a QGA until Dominguez's uncoordinated pieces tied themselves in too many knots to escape.  This left the door open for both Carlsen and Alekseev (pictured) to attempt to win and so tie the scores to force a rapid tie-break.

Carlsen's game against Onischuk petered out into a draw after a series of exchanges, leaving Magnus to hop on a plane to Mainz where he will be playing again very soon!  This left Alekseev to see if he could inflict another loss on local boy Yannick Pelleiter.  For a long time it looked as though a draw was on the cards and Dominguez would get away with losing in the last round, but yet again Pelleiter contrived to snatch defeat from the jaws of a draw (not a victory!) and Dominguez suddenly had more work to do if he wanted the Biel crown.

The first two rapid tie-breaks games were drawn, so the players proceeded to blitz games.  After drawing the first, Alekseev finally broke the impasse by winning with the Black pieces in a frenetic final game.

So an exciting tournament ends with the pre-event favourite Carlsen pushed down into third place.  Not a terrible result, but certainly disappointing.  Dominguez had a great tournament and was perhaps unlucky to lose out at the last gasp.  However, the plaudits go to Evgeny Alekseev who lost 2 games but won 5 and is the 2008 Biel Champion.

The final standings:

The tie break results: