Mediaboss Marketing

ACCENTUS Chess960: Victory for Pragg and Donchenko

Press release by the Biel Chess Festival

The participants of the GMT Masters and Challengers tournaments played the one-day ACCENTUS Chess960 tournament on Saturday. In this variation, the positions of the pieces in the first row 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 positions in the standings of the ACCENTUS Chess960 serve 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 5 out of 7 points.

Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu

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 was rapid chess. Haik Martirosyan from Armenia proved to be the strongest rapid player, ahead of the Chess960 winner, Praggnanandhaa. Vincent Keymer and L Quang Liem finished level on points with the Indian grandmaster.

As in Chess960, Alexander Donchenko leads the GMT-Challengers ranking. Saleh Salem is the German's closest chaser after the first day of the Triathlon.

An open one-day rapid tournament with 143 participants took place simultaneously in Biel. It was won by Mukhiddin Madaminov from Uzbekistan.

Alexander Donchenko

As in previous years, the Grandmaster Tournament is organised as a triathlon, a mixture of games in different formats: classical, rapid and blitz. In this year's edition, a GMT-Masters and a GMT-Challengers are taking place simultaneously.

In the GMT-Masters, Haik Martirosyan showed that he is a force to be reckoned with in the rapid disciplines. He started the tournament with two wins against Sam Shankland and Vincent Keymer both 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 favourite to take the title. His closest chasers are Praggnanandhaa, Keymer and last year's winner L.

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

Master Class Vol.17 - Boris Spassky

In this video course, experts including Dorian Rogozenco, Mihail Marin, Karsten Mller and Oliver Reeh, examine the games of Boris Spassky. Let them show you which openings Spassky chose to play, where his strength in middlegames were and much more.

Continue reading here:
Biel Festival: Martirosyan and Donchenko the strongest in the rapid - Chess News | ChessBase