Two Winners Take Early Lead in Biel
The intimate six-player double round robin in Biel, Switzerland got underway yesterday. This 47th edition once again takes place in the capital of Swiss watchmaking, and two players showed their precision on day one.
GMs Hou Yifan (2629) and Radoslaw Wojtaszek (2733) jumped out to the early lead. They beat GM Anish Giri (2750) and GM Alexander Motylev (2698), respectively. Top seeded GM Maxime Vachier-Lagrave (2766) tried an opening surprise, but was met with a bigger surprise against GM Pentala Harikrishna (2726); they drew despite the chicanery.
Hou Yifan's 100+ point upset continues her recent hot streak. Earlier this month, she closed out a +7 performance at the FIDE Women's Grand Prix event in Lopota, Georgia. In her last dozen games, she has buttressed her rating by nearly 25 points, effectively halving the margin between her and longtime women's number one GM Judit Polgar.
"I'm just trying to improve my rating -- that's more important to me than any one specific result," she said after the game. Her career mark against Giri is now +2 -0 =2.
Unlike in many Sicilians where Black accepts a backward d-pawn and hole on d5, Giri ditched his weakness right away. The activity gained was succinctly snuffed out by Hou Yifan, and when she offered the pawn back to acquire the bishop pair, all the tactics worked out in her favor.
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Mike Klein began playing chess at the age of four in Charlotte, NC. In 1986, he lost to Josh Waitzkin at the National Championship featured in the movie "Searching for Bobby Fischer." A year later, Mike became the youngest member of the very first All-America Chess Team, and was on the team a total of eight times. In 1988, he won the K-3 National Championship, and eventually became North Carolina's youngest-ever master. In 1996, he won clear first for under-2250 players in the top section of the World Open. Mike has taught chess full-time for a dozen years in New York City and Charlotte, with his students and teams winning many national championships. He now works at Chess.com as a Senior Journalist and at ChessKid.com as the Chief Chess Officer. In 2012, 2015, and 2018, he was awarded Chess Journalist of the Year by the Chess Journalists of America. He has also previously won other awards from the CJA such as Best Tournament Report, and also several writing awards for mainstream newspapers. His chess writing and personal travels have now brought him to more than 85 countries.
