The Biel GM tournament is always a highlight of the year, although this year's edition will have a hard time living up to last year's. Alexander Morozevich, last year's brilliant winner, has decided to prep for Mexico City (or something) instead of defending his title. This year it's a nine-round all-play-all instead of the double we've seen lately. The Swiss have put together a very interesting field that should provide plenty of fighting chess. Magnus Carlsen is in action -- last year he made an impression by beating Morozevich twice. The other players: Radjabov, J Polgar, van Wely, Onischuk, Motylev, Grischuk, Avrukh, Bu Xiangzhi (straight from Ottawa) and local boy Pelletier. There are rest days on the 26th and 30th and the final round is Aug. 2.
In yesterday's first round, Polgar got off to a good start by beating van Wely with black. Carlsen beat Bu Xiangzhi in an impressive oppo-bishop endgame I'm not at all sure White is supposed to win. The live games (link at the site each day) begin at 2pm local time; that's 12UTC, 8am EDT. Alexander Onischuk is continuing his impressive run of invitations. I can't remember the last time an American played in so many strong European invitationals in one year. He played an interesting exchange sac to get pressure against Radjabov's KID but it fizzled to an interesting draw. The two first-round winners are facing each other now in round two. Looks drawish.
Very pretty performance by Carlsen against Bu. Something tells me the kid may be a not half bad chess player.
Biel isn't quite the usual Moro beats up 2600s this year, is it?
Onischuk's position against Radjabov looked so promising, but in a short analysis I couldn't figure out how to take the point. Was it just dynamically balanced the whole way?
2nd round: Radjabov offers a draw after 15 moves (with white!). Radja has a very bad reputation when it comes to short draws. Organizers should stop inviting him, until he learns good manners.
Mefisto, but instead he plays it with black and from time to time beats players like Anand, and gains around 4.5/5 performace with KID in tournaments like Corus. Pretty impressive ihmo ;)
what is next for grischuk???missing queen and king against king?he missed a position where fritz gave a huge +- against radjabov.the simple 55rxf4 wold give like +-11???the position looked easy even for a patzer like me.bad time management seems to be a big problem still for grish.all the super GMs make mistakes but grish is a champ.remember the way he lost against nakamura at the olimpics.at tal memorial he left off the hook leko,gelfand and mamedyarov..and many more.i guess is back to school time for him ,because the chess God is very jealous on the pokerGod.no more zeitnot!
Wow, that 55 Rxf4 that Grischuk missed against Radjabov was +11? Yikes. The analysis on crestbook just was +- so I had know idea that this simple capture lead to an OVERWHLEMING advantage.
gmnotyet,
Since you were the one who first directed me to that site, I should tell you that Vasiliy Lebedev's comment after 56.Rxf4 translate into English as: "How can Black defend after 56.Rxf4? They can't." And the position after 61. d6 in that line supports the conclusion :)
the only positive thing for grischuk in that game against radjabov is that he overplayed the azeri talent.getting close to nothing from the opening(after the opening the position was =,but white had a more active position)he gradualy overplayed radja.the initiative is a dangerous weapon in the hands of grischuk,but as i said the lack of time towards the end of game is killing him.if he doesn't manage his time better in mexico he is gonne get a big minus score.can i get the corect crestbook adress?thank you for posting about that game.
the only positive thing for grischuk in that game against radjabov is that he overplayed the azeri talent.getting close to nothing from the opening(after the opening the position was =,but white had a more active position)he gradualy overplayed radja.the initiative is a dangerous weapon in the hands of grischuk,but as i said the lack of time towards the end of game is killing him.if he doesn't manage his time better in mexico he is gonne get a big minus score.can i get the corect crestbook adress?thank you for posting about that game.
dany buddy wanna prediction? Grisch gonna win Mexico and that is not a joke.
abdulla,grish has the potential to pull the upset,but compare to kramnik,anand,aronian lacks consistency.he alternates brilliant games with poor amateurlike games and he misses to much on favorable positions.the last clasical tourney that he won was poikovsky 2004!!!so please give me a break.no disrespect but he doesn't have a chance in my opinion.then again,u never know..