Martirosyan and Donchenko in the lead

Kick-off to the flagship event of the Biel Chess Festival, the Grandmaster Tournament (GMT)! This year it is divided into the GMT-Masters and the GMT-Challengers. The first discipline on the programme today was rapid. The strengths of yesterday's Chess960 were confirmed: yesterday's second placed Haik Martirosyan from Armenia proved to be the strongest rapid player today, ahead of yesterday's winner Praggnanandhaa. Yesterday's runners-up Keymer and Lê also finished level on points with the Indian. As yesterday in Chess960, Alexander Donchenko leads the GMT-Challengers ranking. Salem Saleh is the German's closest rival after the first day, ranking sceond. At the same day, an open one-day rapid tournament with 143 participants took place in Biel. It was won by Mukhiddin Madaminov from Uzbekistan.

As in previous years, the Grandmaster Tournament will be organised as a triathlon: A mixture of games in the different cadences of classical, rapid and blitz – this year divided into the strength classes GMT-Masters and GMT-Challengers.

In the GMT-Masters, Haik Martirosyan showed, as he did yesterday, that he is a force to be reckoned with in the rapid disciplines. He started the tournament with two wins against Shankland and Keymer – both wins played with the black pieces – and was not defeated in the following rounds either. If the Armenian can continue at this level in the slower, classical games, which count more heavily in the scoring, he will be a force to be reckoned with. His closest rivals on equal points are Praggnanandhaa, Keymer and last year's winner Lê.

Alexander Donchenko lived up to his role as favourite in the GMT-Challengers: after the rapid games, he leads the table with a one-point lead over Emirati Salem Saleh and two points over Bjerre and Vaishali.

 

GMT-Masters: Interim Ranking

Rank	Name	Games	Classical	Rapid	Blitz	Total
1	GM Haik MARTIROSYAN	5		7
2	GM PRAGGNANANDHAA R	5		5
3	GM Vincent KEYMER	5		5
4	GM LÊ Quang Liêm	5		5
5	GM Abhimanyu MISHRA	5		4
6	GM Sam SHANKLAND	5		4

 

GMT-Challengers: Interim Ranking

Rank	Name	Games	Classical	Rapid	Blitz	Total
1	GM Alexander DONCHENKO	5		7
2	GM Saleh Salam	5		6
3	GM Jonas BJERRE	5		5
4	GM VAISHALI Rameshbabu	5		5
5	GM Marc'Andria MAURIZZI	5		4
6	GM Ihor SAMUNENKOV	5		3

 

Rapid tournament: Madaminov wins

The one-day rapid tournament of Biel – nine rounds, 15 minutes thinking time per player and game – was won by Uzbek IM Mukhiddin Madaminov. He won all his games – with the exception of the eighth round, in which he lost to the current Junior Women World No. 1, Bibisara Assaubayeva, who finished second in the tournament with 7 ½ points thanks to this success. With Irine Sukander from Indonesia in sixth place, a second woman finished in the top six of the tournament. Davide Arcuti was the best Swiss player, he finished the tournament in fourteenth place.

Final ranking Rapid Tournament: https://chess-results.com/tnr949481.aspx?lan=0&art=1&rd=9&fed=VIE&turdet=YES&flag=30

Outlook: Start of the Master Tournament MTO

The most important of the open tournaments, the Master Tournament MTO, begins on Monday at the Biel Congress Centre. The traditional MTO brings together players with an Elo rating of over 1900, led by India's Aryan Chopra (Elo 2632), who finished second in last year's tournament – can he live up to his role as the favourite this year?
The participants in the two GMT Grandmaster Tournaments have their first rest day on Monday. The programme includes a boat trip to La Neuveville, a small medieval town on Lake Biel, for those who dare not to devote themselves fully to their preparation.

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.