Vaishali Enters Top 10 With 3rd Win In A Row
GM Vaishali Rameshbabu just can't stop winning! The Indian star took the lead in the 2024 Biel Chess Festival Challengers and has entered the Women's Top-10 after defeating GM Ihor Samunenkov with a brilliant, if flawed, attack. GM Jonas Bjerre grabbed a first classical win, against GM Marc'Andria Maurizzi, while all games were drawn in the masters, leaving Abhimanyu Mishra in the sole lead.
Round four starts Friday, July 19, at 8 a.m. ET / 14:00 CEST / 5:30 p.m. IST.
We finally had a quiet round in the Masters, while Vaishali continues to provide Games of the Day single-handedly in the Challengers.
Classical Chess Round 3 Results: Masters And Challengers
The big change on the standings was that Vaishali took over as the leader with her four-point classical win, while previous leader GM Saleh Salem was held to a 1.5-point draw by GM Alexander Donchenko. That means the lowest-rated players are now the sole leaders in both groups.
Masters And Challengers Standings After Classical Chess Round 3
Biel Challengers Round 3: Vaishali's Fun Continues
This time we need to start with the Challengers, and with another Vaishali game featuring stunning tactical ideas.
Samunenkov 0-4 Vaishali
The curiosity about this game was that the opening promised little. For the first 19 moves the players followed Vaishali's game against U.S. veteran GM Gregory Kaidanov from the final round of the 2023 Qatar Masters. She commented: "After the opening it was clear I had good compensation for the pawn, but I was not playing for a win at all. I was fine with a draw."
In Qatar, Kaidanov had played 20.a3, while Samunenkov went for 20.Nc1, but that altered little. The opening had been a success for Vaishali in both games, but in Qatar she lost her way and was ultimately doomed when she played the rash 50...f5?.
It says something about her mental strength, however, that she saw no ghosts and snatched the chance to play 31...f5!? in Biel, and then follow up with 32...g5. That second move was instantly given a question mark:
It's hard to argue, since the move does objectively lose, but only to a brilliant queen sacrifice that neither player spotted in the game. "It looked very tricky for White," said Vaishali, and the sequence of only moves she found to force a win at the end made it a richly-deserved victory.
Vaishali summed up: "I’m very happy. I’m also especially enjoying the games—there are some very fun lines I’m calculating!"
I'm also especially enjoying the games—there are some very fun lines I'm calculating!
—Vaishali Rameshbabu
As well as enjoying the process she's also picking up points, both 12/12 points for classical chess in Biel and 19.8 rating points for defeating much higher-rated opposition.
Vaishali's estimated performance rating for scoring 3/3 is 3006🤯. This means that if she had a rating of 3006, then she would have a 75% probability of winning 3 games against players with an average Elo rating of 2607.
— Mehmet Ismail (@drmehmetismail) July 18, 2024
Note: She won games against Bjerre (2653), Donchenko…
She's now overtaken two former women's world champions to move into the top 10 on the 2700chess women's live rating list.
Vaishali became the leader of the Challengers after Salem seemed to get a big advantage with the black pieces against Donchenko but was unable to make a breakthrough in the closed position.
The other game in the Challengers was a clash between two players who had been struggling.
Bjerre 4-0 Maurizzi
20-year-old Danish GM Bjerre is the top seed, but had lost both games so far, and a third loss in a row looked likely as he focused on trapping his opponent's knight only to miss his own knight could be caught in the same trap. A wild game ensued, but Bjerre finally came out on top against 17-year-old Corsican GM Maurizzi.
The end of that complicated battle was fun, as Maurizzi tried the kind of trick that has won countless lost positions in fast online games.
Maurizzi's 52...Qh4?!? would have better chances of success in an online bullet game! 😀 Jonas Bjerre picks up a win after 2 losses! https://t.co/8J6ekJtvLZ #BielChess pic.twitter.com/AVq8QftlpS
— chess24 (@chess24com) July 18, 2024
For once the Masters couldn't keep up with that entertainment value.
Biel Masters Round 3: Mishra Continues To Lead
15-year-old Mishra reasoned that there was no burning need to play on against defending champion GM Liem Le when he was offered a chance to make a draw by three-fold repetition on move 22:
"When I felt objectively White doesn’t have much, I was ok with a draw. A draw was fine. He’s such a strong player. Also in terms of the standings, it should be fine."
It was all fine for Mishra, since GM Haik Martirosyan, the only player who could overtake him, made a very quiet draw against GM Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu.
In the remaining game, GM Sam Shankland seemed to have excellent chances with the black pieces against GM Vincent Keymer, but some missed nuances and an exchange of queens saw the advantage fizzle out into a drawn endgame.
Things are getting critical, since just two classical rounds, and one day's blitz, remain before two players will be eliminated in both sections.
How to watch?
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.
Previous coverage:
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.
