Vachier-Lagrave beats Carlsen in 5th round Biel

PeterDoggers

Updated: Aug 31, 2011, 12:49 AM | 0 | Chess Event Coverage

Magnus Carlsen suffered his first loss at the Biel Chess Festival on Saturday. With the white pieces Maxime Vachier-Lagrave held a small advantage for long, and eventually managed to break through the Norwegian's defence with a pawn sac, to score the full point after 96 moves. Alexander Morozevich is just one point behind Carlsen after beating Fabiano Caruana with Black.

General info

The 44th Biel Chess Festival takes place July 16-29 in Biel, Switzerland. The 'Grandmaster Tournament' is a six-player, double round robin with Caruana, Pelletier, Shirov, Carlsen, Morozevich and Vachier-Lagrave.The rate of play is 2 hours for 40 moves, then 1 hour for 20 moves and then 15 minutes to finish the game, with 30 seconds increment from move 61. The 'football' scoring system is in effect: three points for a win, one for a draw and zero for a loss. Besides, no draw offers are permitted before move 30. More info here.

Round 5

Suddenly anything is possible in Biel after tournament leader Magnus Carlsen suffered his first loss, against Maxime Vachier-Lagrave. Normally Alexander Morozevich, who beat Fabiano Caruana, would have taken over the lead from the Norwegian on tie-break, with an even number of board points. However, as the football score is used, the Norwegian is still clear first, one point ahead of the Russian.

Carlsen wasn't himself on Saturday. He played quite passively and allowed his opponent to get a positional bind which he could try and win for hours, without any risk. The Frenchman manoeuvred for many, many moves and even had to worry a few times that he wouldn't allow a threefold repetition. The winning idea was pretty:

Vachier-Lagrave - Carlsen Biel, 2011

78. f4! This key move Vachier-Lagrave saw long before. 78... gxf4 79. Qh3 Kf7 80. Ra8 Qe6 81. Qh5+ Kf8

82. Qf5! Qxf5 83. gxf5 Rxa8 84. Rxa8+ Kf7 85. Kc2 Re7 86. Kd3 Re8 87. Ra7+ Kg8 88. Rg7+ Kf8 89. Rxh7 Kg8 90. Ra7 Kh8

91. h7! Rb8 92. Ke2 Rd8 93. Kf3 Rc8 94. Kg4 Rd8 95. Kh5 f3 96. Kg6 1-0

A good win for Vachier-Lagrave, who won the tournament two years ago

Caruana didn't have his day either, against Morozevich. In a Catalan the Italian seemed to have trouble finding a good plan right after the opening. Black kept his extra pawn, but then he played the break ...c5 too early, so that White got good compensation anyway.

However, when a pair of rooks and the queens went off the board, the ending was just very good for Black. Then, in timetrouble, both players missed that White could just win back the pawn, and after that Morozevich finished it off without further errors. It wasn't the best game of the tournament, but surely an important win for the Russian.

Morozevich beats Caruana, narrowing the gap with Carlsen

The draw between Yannick Pelletier and Alexei Shirov was quite interesting and their joint post-game analysis in the video below took more than half an hour. There were just too many fascinating variations in the ending! Well worth watching.

Pelletier vs Shirov: a fascinating draw

Sunday is the second and final rest day in Biel. On Monday your editor-in-chief is travelling from Amsterdam to Biel by train, and I'll be providing some videos during the final rounds. After that, on my way back I'll make a stop in Dortmund to cover the last two rounds from there.

Games round 5

Game viewer by ChessTempo

Videos by Chessbase

Biel 2011 | Schedule & results

Round 1	18.07.11	14:00 CET	Round 6	25.07.11	14:00 CET
Caruana	½-½	Vachier-Lagrave	Vachier-Lagrave	-	Caruana
Pelletier	0-1	Carlsen	Carlsen	-	Pelletier
Shirov	½-½	Morozevich	Morozevich	-	Shirov
Round 2	19.07.11	14:00 CET	Round 7	26.07.11	14:00 CET
Vachier-Lagrave	0-1	Morozevich	Morozevich	-	Vachier-Lagrave
Carlsen	1-0	Shirov	Shirov	-	Carlsen
Caruana	½-½	Pelletier	Pelletier	-	Caruana
Round 3	20.07.11	14:00 CET	Round 8	27.07.11	14:00 CET
Pelletier	½-½	Vachier-Lagrave	Vachier-Lagrave	-	Pelletier
Shirov	1-0	Caruana	Caruana	-	Shirov
Morozevich	½-½	Carlsen	Carlsen	-	Morozevich
Round 4	22.07.11	14:00 CET	Round 9	28.07.11	14:00 CET
Shirov	½-½	Vachier-Lagrave	Carlsen	-	Vachier-Lagrave
Morozevich	½-½	Pelletier	Morozevich	-	Caruana
Carlsen	1-0	Caruana	Shirov	-	Pelletier
Round 5	23.07.11	14:00 CET	Round 10	29.07.11	11:00 CET
Vachier-Lagrave	1-0	Carlsen	Vachier-Lagrave	-	Shirov
Caruana	0-1	Morozevich	Pelletier	-	Morozevich
Pelletier	½-½	Shirov	Caruana	-	Carlsen

Biel 2011 | Round 5 Standings (Classical)

Biel 2011 | Round 5 Standings (Football)

#	Name		Elo	Points
1.	Magnus Carlsen	NOR	2821	10
2.	Alexander Morozevich	RUS	2694	9
3-4.	Maxime Vachier-Lagrave	FRA	2722	6
3-4.	Alexei Shirov	ESP	2714	6
5.	Yannick Pelletier	SUI	2590	4
6.	Fabiano Caruana	ITA	2711	2

Links

Peter Doggers

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.”

Peter's first book The Chess Revolution is out now!

Company Contact and News Accreditation:

Email: peter@chess.com FOR SUPPORT PLEASE USE chess.com/support!
Phone: 1 (800) 318-2827
Address: 877 E 1200 S #970397, Orem, UT 84097