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Morozevich beats Pelletier in last round Biel (VIDEO!)

PeterDoggers
| 0 | Chess Event Coverage

In the last round of the Accentus GM tournament in Biel Alexander Morozevich defeated Yannick Pelletier. The Russian finished second behind Magnus Carlsen, who drew with Fabiano Caruana. The other game, between Alexei Shirov and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, also ended in a draw. Video with Biel impressions.

General info

The 44th Biel Chess Festival took place July 16-29 in Biel, Switzerland. The 'Grandmaster Tournament' was a six-player, double round robin with Caruana, Pelletier, Shirov, Carlsen, Morozevich and Vachier-Lagrave.The rate of play was 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 was in effect: three points for a win, one for a draw and zero for a loss. Besides, no draw offers were permitted before move 30. More info here.

Impressions of Biel

This is our video with impressions of the city and the tournament. It was also shown at the closing ceremony.

Round 10

"The more pieces you exchange, the less you can blunder," joked Alexander Morozevich during his post-mortem with GM Miso Cebalo. The Croatian grandmaster, who gave commentary every day in Biel, responded to the Russian: "Especially in the morning rounds!" The 10th and last round of the Accentus GM tournament started as early as 11AM... Morozevich couldn't win the tournament any more, but played for a win anyway after his opponent Yannick Pelletier didn't treat the opening very well. Especially castling queenside on the 13th move was wrong, where the Swiss GM should first have traded bishops. It was instructive to see that in the next phase the white bishop was White's biggest problem: it was doing nothing. Black's position was improving more and more, and with very accurate moves Morozevich didn't give his opponent any chance to survive. Pelletier-Morozevich Magnus Carlsen, who had already won the tournament with a round to spare, played the Philidor Defence against Fabiano Caruana. The Philidor? Did he every play that before? Well, a world's number one should be capable of playing anything, and Black came out of the opening without any problems. Caruana had to give up his bishop pair to avoid getting into a position where he couldn't really move. In the game the Italian got a slightly worse position but as there was no way for Black to make progress, Carlsen offered a draw just before the time control. Caruana-Carlsen The quickest game of the round was the one between Maxime Vachier-Lagrave and Alexei Shirov. In a well-known gambit line of the Open Catalan, Shirov came up with a logical novelty and then the Frenchman entered a line that soon led to a move repetition. It was not a surprise that Carlsen won this event. The Norwegian again played at his very high level and took two more rating points home. A bigger story might be the impressive second place for Alexander Morozevich. After winning the Russian Championship Higher League, he did very well yet again, and now won 30.7 rating points in two events to reach a virtual 21st place in the world rankings. But, to him rating is much less important than the level of play he reaches, as he told us in an interview we did with him after the last round. We hope to publish it somewhere in the coming week. The six participants of the Accentus GM group Tomorrow the author of this report hops on a train again, in the direction of Dortmund, Germany. We were told there's some chess there too!

Games round 10

 
 

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Biel 2011 | Schedule & results
Round 118.07.1114:00 CET Round 625.07.1114:00 CET
Caruana½-½Vachier-Lagrave Vachier-Lagrave½-½Caruana
Pelletier0-1Carlsen Carlsen1-0Pelletier
Shirov½-½Morozevich Morozevich½-½Shirov
Round 219.07.1114:00 CET Round 726.07.1114:00 CET
Vachier-Lagrave0-1Morozevich Morozevich1-0Vachier-Lagrave
Carlsen1-0Shirov Shirov0-1Carlsen
Caruana½-½Pelletier Pelletier0-1Caruana
Round 320.07.1114:00 CET Round 827.07.1114:00 CET
Pelletier½-½Vachier-Lagrave Vachier-Lagrave1-0Pelletier
Shirov1-0Caruana Caruana0-1Shirov
Morozevich½-½Carlsen Carlsen½-½Morozevich
Round 422.07.1114:00 CET Round 928.07.1114:00 CET
Shirov½-½Vachier-Lagrave Carlsen½-½Vachier-Lagrave
Morozevich½-½Pelletier Morozevich0-1Caruana
Carlsen1-0Caruana Shirov½-½Pelletier
Round 523.07.1114:00 CET Round 1029.07.1111:00 CET
Vachier-Lagrave1-0Carlsen Vachier-Lagrave½-½Shirov
Caruana0-1Morozevich Pelletier0-1Morozevich
Pelletier½-½Shirov Caruana½-½Carlsen

Biel 2011 | Round 10 Standings (Classical)
 

Biel 2011 | Round 10 Standings (Football)
#Name EloPoints
1.Magnus CarlsenNOR282119
2.Alexander MorozevichRUS269417
3.Maxime Vachier-LagraveFRA272212
4.Alexei ShirovESP271412
5.Fabiano CaruanaITA271110
6.Yannick PelletierSUI25905

The open tournament was won by Ni Hua. Together with his compatriot Bu Xiangzhi he will play the Politiken Cup in Copenhagen before returning to China.

The open tournament was won by Ni Hua, left on the picture. Together with his compatriot Bu Xiangzhi he will play the Politiken Cup in Copenhagen before returning to China.

Photos © ChessVibes

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PeterDoggers
Peter Doggers

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.”

In October, Peter's first book The Chess Revolution will be published!


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