Vaishali, Mishra Continue Giant-Killing In Biel
GMs Vaishali Rameshbabu and Abhimanyu Mishra both won again in round two of the 2024 Biel Chess Festival despite being the lowest-rated players in their groups. Mishra leads the Masters after a long, grinding win against GM Sam Shankland, while Vaishali took down Challengers leader GM Alexander Donchenko in another tactical gem. That enabled GM Saleh Salem to take a slender lead by inflicting a second loss on top-seed GM Jonas Bjerre.
Round three starts Thursday, July 18, at 8 a.m. ET / 14:00 CEST / 5:30 p.m. IST.
There were "just" three decisive games in round two, but two of the draws featured heroic defense of seemingly hopeless positions.
Classical Chess Round 2 Results: Masters And Challengers
The four-point classical win saw Mishra take a 1.5-point lead in the Masters, while Salem is ahead of Vaishali because he scored a point more in rapid chess—both players are on 8/8 so far in classical!
Masters And Challengers Standings After Classical Chess Round 2
Biel Masters Round 2: Mishra Wins Again As Keymer Escapes
There were two draws in round two of the Masters, but just one was of the "grandmasterly" variety. GM Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu stabilized after his loss the day before to make a draw with Black against leader GM Liem Le, who had no objection to a tame Queen's Gambit Accepted that ended in a repetition on move 34.
The other draw was almost a masterpiece by GM Haik Martirosyan.
Martirosyan 1.5-1.5 Keymer
Up to a point, Martirosyan did everything right. He dominated a maneuvering battle against GM Vincent Keymer and then got to unleash a powerful sacrifice against g6 not once, but twice.
The second was particularly sweet, since after the only reply 53...Qxg6 the point was 54.Qf6+! Qxf6 55.exf6+ and the e7-rook fell. That left a winning rook endgame, but one that lent more evidence to the strong suspicion that all rook endgames are drawn. One utterly natural move by Martirosyan, 69.h6+?, and seven hours of work was undone.
The one player to win in the Masters was Mishra, who has now picked up 13.1 rating points in just two games, despite having the black pieces in both.
Shankland 0-4 Mishra
Mishra summed up how he'd won a second game in a row: "I’ve just been trying to play my best chess. In this game I had a feeling that he overpressed—he could have made a draw at most of the points."
Shankland had reason to believe he had an advantage, but by move 45, when he offered a draw, Mishra was right to play on. An exchange of mutual misses around the second time control at move 60 saw Mishra emerge with three healthy extra pawns, though the game ultimately came down to a study-like position. Fortunately, the 15-year-old remembered it from seeing it in Dvoretsky’s Endgame Manual five years earlier and was able to avoid the tricks and pick up a huge win.
Mishra is on fire and gets to play White against Le in the next round.
Challengers Round 1: Vaishali Brilliant Again, Salem Takes Lead
Vaishali 4-0 Donchenko
Another day, another brilliant tactical game by Vaishali, who said afterward, "I had a lot of fun calculating some nice lines!"
The lowest-rated player in the tournament won the opening battle against Donchenko and then correctly unleashed the stunning 18.Rxf7!!, a move that is perhaps all the more impressive because she confessed to being unsure whether it was working.
It was. Though mistakes were made by both players in what followed, the end result was a thoroughly deserved win for the Indian rising star, who ended with another brilliancy.
That win took Vaishali over 2500 on the 2700chess live rating list, and the 23-year-old is on the brink of the women's top-10.
That win didn't quite see Vaishali take the lead, since Salem also won a second game in a row after a topsy-turvy encounter with Bjerre.
Can you spot the final move that forced resignation? White to play and win!
In the remaining game, 17-year-old GM Marc'Andria Maurizzi and 15-year-old Ihor Samunenkov were trying to bounce back after losing the day before.
Maurizzi won the middlegame battle, but Samunenkov found a great defensive resource at the end to force a draw by perpetual check, with both players sharing 1.5 points each.
The live broadcast was hosted by GM Arturs Neiksans and Angelika Valkova.
The 2024 Biel Chess Festival runs July 13-26 in Biel/Bienne, Switzerland, and features over 20 individual events. The main ones are the six-player Masters and Challengers GM Triathlons where the players compete in five rounds of Rapid chess (2 points for a win/1 for a draw), five rounds of Classical (4/1.5), and 10 rounds of Blitz (1/0.5). The top four then play three more rounds of Classical against each other, with colors reversed. Ties are settled by the standings of the Chess960 tournament held on the opening day.
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Colin McGourty led news at Chess24 from its launch until it merged with Chess.com a decade later. An amateur player, he got into chess writing when he set up the website Chess in Translation after previously studying Slavic languages and literature in St. Andrews, Odesa, Oxford, and Krakow.
