Morozevich wins again, point clear
Alexander Morozevich also won his second White game today, after a big blunder by Gelfand, to increase his lead at the Biel Chess Festival to a point. Caruana-Vachier-Lagrave and Alekseev-Ivanchuk both ended in a draw. 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 2
As summer scrolls past Europe, heat scorching the mediterrean beaches, we were expecting sizzling action on the boards - especially after the great first round in Biel. Unfortunately in the second round there wasn't much action to report other than Super GM Gelfand dropping a rook like an 1800 with talent. Credit to Moro for finding the move just as quickly as I did. ;-)Sarcasm aside, Gelfand had been resisting strong pressure throughout the game and was just holding the position. Perhaps there's more venom than we tought in this pet line of Sergei Tiviakov, now picked up by Morozevich as well!?Writing this report from an Amsterdam cafe that encourages its customers to bring along their laptops, one might be tempted to elaborate about some of the more attractive clientele instead of the games Caruana-Vachier-Lagrave and Alekseev-Ivanchuk. Any objections? Down to business. In an Exchange Grünfeld Caruana left theory early but although he forced Vachier-Lagrave into passive mode, it didn't look like anything close to a refutation of the Grünfeld Indian Defence. Alekseev's decision to go for a delayed Exchanged French didn't really raise the excitement either and that's it - a six-player round-robin logically only has three games, and so a few uneventful rounds are unavoidable.Games round 2
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Biel Chess Festival 2009 | Schedule & results
All photos courtesy of the tournament website, published with permission.
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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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