MVL Gets 1st Win In Biel As Georgiadis Misses Double Attacks
Maxime Vachier-Lagrave won his first game at the Biel Chess Festival. The French GM was about to convert a pawn-up endgame when his opponent Nico Georgiadis suddenly dropped a full rook.
At half-time, Magnus Carlsen and Shakhriyar Mamedyarov are still tied for first place after drawing their individual game. Peter Svidler and David Navara also split the point.
A day after his best result so far—and perhaps fatigued by that great game with Carlsen—Georgiadis played his worst game of the tournament. He missed double attacks at the start and end of his encounter with MVL.
It was a Mikenas English (1.c4 Nf6 2.Nc3 e6 3.e4 d5 4.e5 d4), from where Vachier-Lagrave got a nice initiative after his opponent didn't go for the most critical option, 11...dxc3. A few moves later, MVL won a pawn because Georgiadis missed 19.Qb1 attacking both b6 and h7.
It was already clear that Vachier-Lagrave was going to win when Georgiadis saved him from further technical tasks as he missed a knight fork.
That wasn't Georgiadis's best game. | Photo: Lennart Ootes/Biel International Chess Festival.
It was MVL's first win in the tournament but he's still on minus one. In this first half, Georgiadis scored half a point against all five opponents. That's worse than his expected score, but he should be fully warmed up now, and might well do better in the second half.
MVL scored just before half-time. | Photo: Lennart Ootes/Biel International Chess Festival.
The top clash between Magnus Carlsen and Shakhriyar Mamedyarov was a long and quiet battle with once again Carlsen trying to squeeze water from stone. This time, the stone refused.
The Azerbaijani GM played the Open variation against Navara earlier, but couldn't repeat that because of Carlsen's 5.d3. Profiting from that early, modest pawn move, Mamedyarov logically put his bishop on c5, just like he had done in a blitz game against Alexander Grischuk last year.
The resulting, rather quiet position resembled a Giuoco Pianissimo, in which Carlsen kept a tiny edge throughout the game. Mamedyarov showed once again that, besides aggressive as White, he can be very solid as Black.
When two 2800s meet in Biel. | Photo: Lennart Ootes/Biel International Chess Festival.
Peter Svidler said he got "the maximum" from his 7.b3 move in the English, but that resulted in less of an advantage than he expected. He suggested it was not his day when David Navara mentioned 18.f3 Ng3 19.Bxf5, a move Svidler had forgotten to be "legal."
Quite an interesting opening phase in Svidler vs Navara. | Photo: Lennart Ootes/Biel International Chess Festival.
Biel 2018 | Round 5 Standings
| # | Fed | Name | Rtg | Perf | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | Pts | SB |
| 1 | Carlsen,Magnus | 2842 | 2867 | ½ | ½ | 1 | 1 | ½ | 3.5/5 | 8 | ||
| 2 | Mamedyarov,Shakhriyar | 2801 | 2875 | ½ | ½ | ½ | 1 | 1 | 3.5/5 | 7 | ||
| 3 | Svidler,Peter | 2753 | 2808 | ½ | ½ | ½ | ½ | 1 | 3.0/5 | |||
| 4 | Navara,David | 2741 | 2741 | 0 | ½ | ½ | ½ | 1 | 2.5/5 | |||
| 5 | Vachier-Lagrave,Maxime | 2779 | 2663 | 0 | 0 | ½ | ½ | 1 | 2.0/5 | |||
| 6 | Georgiadis,Nico | 2526 | 2402 | ½ | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.5/5 |
Games via TWIC.
Round-six pairings: Svidler vs Vachier-Lagrave, Navara vs Carlsen, Georgiadis vs Mamedyarov.
The games start every day at 2 p.m. central European time (5 a.m. Pacific, 8 a.m. Eastern). You can follow them in Live Chess. The Chessbrahs are providing daily commentary with GMs Yasser Seirawan, Eric Hansen and Aman Hambleton, which you can follow on Chess.com/TV and Twitch.tv/Chessbrah.
Earlier post:
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