Vachier-Lagrave wins Biel 2009
All last-round games ended in a draw and so Maxime Vachier-Lagrave became the surprising winner of the Biel Chess Festival today. The Frenchman stayed undefeated, finished on 6/10 and scored the biggest success of his career so far.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 10
After some great rounds, the last day in Biel wasn't too exciting. Vachier-Lagrave, who was leading by half a point, took a quick draw against Alekseev after surprising the Russian with the tricky 7...Nc6 sideline in the 6.Bg5 Najdorf. Not long afterwards Morozevich and Caruana followed suit in a Slechter-Chebanenko-Queen's-Gambit-Exchange hybrid, and so only Ivanchuk had a chance to finish shared first with Vachier-Lagrave. However, if anyone was better in their ending it was Gelfand, but it wasn't much and so also in that game there was no winner.Biel 2009 was a great tournament for 18-year-old Vachier-Lagrave, who played almost at 2800 level for ten games and clearly didn't suffer from the little time (one day!) between San Sebastián and this event. Favorites Morozevich and Ivanchuk scored close to their rating expectancy; the former by alternating some strong games with some weak moments. But with only three draws Morozevich was, as always, great to watch. Gelfand disappointed slightly - he drew with everybody and blundered twice against Morozevich. Last seed Caruana, won turned 17 today, finished last but the Italian might well surprise us, like Vachier-Lagrave did, in some tournament in the near future.Games round 10
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Biel Chess Festival 2009 | Schedule & results
Video impressons
Photos & video courtesy of the Biel Chess Festival
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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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