Morozevich loses to Alekseev in Biel
After his excellent start, three times winner Morozevich is suddenly back on fifty percent at the Biel Chess Festival, after losing to Alekseev today. Drawing with Vachier-Lagrave, Ivanchuk is now leading by half a point going into the second rest day.Caruana and Gelfand drew quickly in round 6 of the Biel Chess Festival.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 6
He had been better for most of the game, but then spoilt it all with one big blunder. Alexander Morozevich unnecessarily lost his second game in Biel today, against his compatriot Evgeny Alekseev. A few moves after the time control, 43...e6 must have been a simple oversight - White can just take it! Actually it's more likely that he had overlooked the subsequent double pin over the e-file and the a1-h8 diagonal, concretely, the moves 47.Re3 and 48.Bd2. After finding several only moves, Morozevich collapsed with 49...Kf6. A small tragedy - it can happen to anyone.By drawing with Vachier-Lagrave, Vassily Ivanchuk is the only one left in Biel with a plus score - his +1 is enough to lead the tournament by half a point. The Ukrainian had kept a small advantage out of the opening but the slightly careless 27.a5?! allowed a bishop sacrifice (or rather, exchange) for three pawns with which Black suddenly created dangerous counterplay. White had nothing better than entering a drawn ending (or so it seemed - 37.Nxc7!? was actually possible).In the topical 8.Re1 Bg4 9.c4 line of the Petroff, Caruana went for the less popular 12.Qh3 instead of the topical 12.Qd1 which Gelfand faced against Leko and Radjabov recently. But the Israeli grandmaster probably also looked at this deviation at some point, with his second Alexander Huzman, and by choosing the most solid moves (as Rybka does) he equalized comfortably. With four rounds to go the field is tightly packed: leader Ivanchuk is only one point ahead of tailender Gelfand. Anything can happen! Tomorrow is the second and last rest day of the tournament, before we'll get to the final, decisive phase.
Meanwhile, in the open event called Masters Tournament, GM Boris Grachev is doing well. Very well. In fact the managed to score an amazing 6 out of 5! That must be at least a +4000 performance rating. I couldn't resist making a screenshot of the current standings.Games round 6
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Biel Chess Festival 2009 | Schedule & results
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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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