Maxime Vachier-Lagrave Wins Biel 2013
On Friday Maxime Vachier-Lagrave won the Grandmaster Tournament in memory of Olivier Breisacher, part of the Biel Chess Festival. The French grandmaster emerged as the winner of the playoff, beating Ding Liren 2-0 in the semi-final and Alexander Moiseenko 1.5-0.5 in the final. For Vachier-Lagrave it was the second victory in the Swiss town; in 2009 he won it for the first time. Back then, at 18, he finished ahead of Boris Gelfand, Alexander Morozevich, Evgeny Alekseev, Vassily Ivanchuk and Fabiano Caruana.
Today's playoff was necessary after Vachier-Lagrave defeated Ding Liren yesterday; as a result, four players tied for first place:
Biel, Breisacher Memorial 2013 | Final standings
| # | Name | Fed | Rtg | + | = | - | Pts | SB |
| 1 | Bacrot, Etienne | FRA | 2714 | 2 | 8 | 0 | 14 | 68.00 |
| 1 | Vachier-Lagrave, Maxime | FRA | 2719 | 3 | 5 | 2 | 14 | 61.00 |
| 1 | Ding, Liren | CHN | 2714 | 3 | 5 | 2 | 14 | 61.00 |
| 1 | Moiseenko, Alexander | UKR | 2699 | 3 | 5 | 2 | 14 | 59.00 |
| 5 | Nepomniachtchi, Ian | RUS | 2717 | 1 | 7 | 2 | 10 | 55.00 |
| 6 | Rapport, Richard | HUN | 2693 | 0 | 6 | 4 | 6 | 38.00 |
The playoff started with the semifinals Vachier-Lagrave vs. Ding Liren and Etienne Bacrot vs. Alexander Moiseenko. They played two blitz games wit 5 minutes on the clock and 2 seconds increment. Below you can find three of these four games; unfortunately the second game between Bacrot and Moiseenko wasn't saved correctly on the official website.
And so the final was between Vachier-Lagrave and Moiseenko. Again, they played two games, but the time control this time was 15 minutes per game and 10 seconds increment per move. Vachier-Lagrave won the first convincingly and then drew the second by the skin of his teeth to become the winner of the Grandmaster Tournament in memoriam Olivier Breisacher.
Here's a video interview done by tournament director GM Yannick Pelletier:
Photos courtesy of the official website, games via TWIC
