I RECEIVED an e-mail last Sunday from an old friend in London who told me that the Biel Chess Festival was now going on in Switzerland and that I should check it out if I was interested in following the chess fortunes of Magnus Carlsen and one other player.
Carlsen is the sixth strongest player in the world today. He is just 23 rating points below that of world chess champion Viswanathan Anand, and on the verge of gaining another 16 points when the World Chess Federation readjusts its July 2008 rating list.
Carlsen had the distinction of becoming the world’s youngest chess grandmaster when he qualified for the title in Dubai in April 2004 at the age of 13. He is also recognised as the second youngest-ever grandmaster in history, after Sergey Karjakin.
Magnus Carlsen is the world’s youngest chess grandmaster.
Born in November 1990, Carlsen learned chess at the age of 8, and became an international master in 2003. One year later, after having gained over 300 rating points, he became a grandmaster. His hopes to become a contender for the World Championship and took a big step forward when he was placed 10th at the FIDE World Cup in 2005. That made him the youngest player ever to qualify for the Candidates.
There has been no stopping Carlsen. He continued to improve in 2006, tying for first place at the Corus Wijk aan Zee Group B tournament, scoring six points from eight games at the 37th Chess Olympiad.
The following year, his incredible results included a joint second-place finish at the Linares-Morelia tournament. The same year, his FIDE rating shot above the 2700 mark. Again, it was a record.
In May last year, he took part in his first Candidates match in Elista but was eliminated in the first round. He made up for his disappointment a few months later by reaching the semi-finals of the FIDE World Chess Cup where he bowed out to the eventual winner, Gata Kamsky.
In the first six months of this year, Carlsen was the joint winner of the Corus Wijk aan Zee Group A tournament and placed second in the Morelia-Linares (2008) behind Anand. He also tied for first place in the Baku Grand Prix tournament which was the first round of FIDE’s Grand Prix series.
Back to the Biel Chess Festival where Carlsen is one of six players in the double round-robin grandmaster tournament. As the defending champion, all eyes are on him. Today is the fifth round of the event and there are five more rounds to go before the tournament ends on July 31.
Carlsen’s progress in Biel can be followed at www.bielchessfestival.ch/ which is the festival’s official website. All the games from the grandmaster tournament will be carried live.
The Biel Chess Festival is now in its 41st year. When it first saw light in 1968, it was only a modest open chess tournament. But through the years, the event kept improving and growing bigger until today there are nine separate events going on either at the same time or one after another.
Apart from the grandmaster tournament where Carlsen is involved, the other big event is the master tournament with its 122-player field. I mentioned “one other player” at the start of this article. This player is none other than our own Mas Hafizulhelmi. In his quest to become a grandmaster, Mas is also playing in the master tournament. I’m rooting for him to turn in some good results and I hope he can do it. Let’s follow his results from the Biel Chess Festival homepage.