The president of the organising committee, Peter Bohnenblust, opened the 57th Biel Chess Festival by thanking all the members of the organising committee, the helpers, both on stage and in the background, as well as the loyal and indispensable partners and sponsors. Dominique Bühler, speaker of the Bernese Grand Council (parliament of the canton of Berne), then addressed greetings to those present. The opening ceremony was accompanied by musical interludes from Duo Toccabile.
The Biel Chess Festival stands for tradition and innovation, as André Vögtlin, President of the Swiss Chess Federation, emphasised in his welcoming message: with 57 uninterrupted editions, Biel is undoubtedly one of the most traditional tournaments in the world. The organisers are constantly innovating with new tournament formats. The Grandmaster Tournament (chess in the classical, rapid and blitz cadences), which has been organised in a triathlon format since 2019, will take place in two versions of six players each this year: The GMT-Masters and the GMT-Challengers.
ACCENTUS Chess 960: Victory for Praggnanandhaa and Donchenko
The participants of the GMT Masters and Challengers tournaments played the one-day ACCENTUS Chess960 tournament today. In this variant of chess, the positions of the pieces in the first row of the players are drawn by lot, so the starting position for the players is different from what they are used to. This tournament is not part of the Grandmasters' Triathlon, but its result is still important: in the event of a tie at the end of the GMT Triathlon, the position in the ranking of the ACCENTUS Chess960 serves as a tie-breaker.
Among the players in the GMT-Masters, the top seeded Indian Praggnanandhaa, known as "Pragg", lived up to his role as favourite by winning the Chess960 tournament with 5/7 points.
Among the GMT-Challengers, Alexander Donchenko prevailed in impressive fashion: he remained unbeaten and won with 5½ out of a possible 7 points.
Final Ranking ACCENTUS Chess960 Masters
|
Rank |
Name |
Games |
Rapid |
|
1 |
GM PRAGGNANANDHAA R |
7 |
5 |
|
2 |
GM Haik MARTIROSYAN |
7 |
5 |
|
3 |
GM Vincent KEYMER |
7 |
4 ½ |
|
4 |
GM LÊ Quang Liêm |
7 |
4 ½ |
|
5 |
GM Abhimanyu MISHRA |
7 |
3 ½ |
|
6 |
GM Sam SHANKLAND |
7 |
3 |
Final Ranking ACCENTUS Chess960 Challengers
|
Rank |
Name |
Games |
Rapid |
|
1 |
GM Alexander DONCHENKO |
7 |
5 ½ |
|
2 |
GM Jonas BJERRE |
7 |
3 ½ |
|
3 |
GM Saleh Salam |
7 |
3 |
|
4 |
GM VAISHALI Rameshbabu |
7 |
2 |
|
5 |
GM Marc'Andria MAURIZZI |
7 |
2 |
|
6 |
GM Ihor SAMUNENKOV |
7 |
½ |
Gabriel Gähwiler Swiss Chess960 rapid champion
At the same time, the Swiss Chess960 Rapid Championship was held in Biel over seven rounds. The tournament was also open to international participants, but only players playing for the Swiss Federation qualified for the Swiss Championship title. With 44 participants, the championship was better attended than in previous years.
Gabriel Gähwiler was crowned Swiss champion, finishing the tournament with 5 ½ out of 7 points. He defeated all of his Swiss opponents and only lost points to international grandmasters, who used the tournament as a warm-up for the upcoming competitions. Gähwiler finished fourth in the overall standings.
The best player of the tournament was the currently untitled young Chinese player Xiao Tong who finished with an impressive 6 ½ out of 7 points – we can expect a lot more from him at the upcoming Master Tournament MTO.
Podium
1. Xiao Tong (CHN)
2. Rinat Jumabayev (KAZ)
3. Sasikiran Krishnan (IND)
Podium Swiss Championship
1. Gabriel Gähwiler
2. Robin Angst
3. Peter Szakolczai
Final standings: https://chess-results.com/tnr949480.aspx?lan=0&art=1&rd=7&fed=SUI&turdet=YES&flag=30
Kwiatkowski wins physicians tournament
The Spitalzentrum Biel physicians' tournament also took place on the opening day of the Biel Chess Festival. Maciej Kwiatkowski came out on top in this tournament reserved for medical professionals.
Final standings: https://chess-results.com/tnr951047.aspx?lan=0&art=1&fed=SUI&turdet=YES&flag=30
Outlook: Start of the GMT-Triathlons and Rapid Tournament
Tomorrow, Sunday, the Biel Chess Festival will be devoted to rapid chess: the two grandmaster triathlon tournaments will begin with the rapid matches, where the participants will each have 15 minutes, plus 5 seconds per move. The six players in both the GMT-Masters and GMT-Challengers will play five games tomorrow, one against each opponent.
The open one-day rapid tournament will also take place tomorrow, in which about 150 participants are expected to compete in the same discipline over nine rounds.
Pictures of the Biel International Chess Festival are available under the following link:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/143150736@N02/collections/72157722912417534/
On the evening of each day of the Festival, the OC sends out a media report on the day's events.