The historic Biel Chess Festival, one of the biggest events in the European chess calendar, has announced its super-strong lineup for 2024 featuring a sharp focus on youth.
The event, which has been running in the lakeside city since 1968, will see a major expansion of its traditional triathlon format for this year’s edition.
Instead of the one six-player GMT Masters triathlon, where grandmasters play a round-robin over blitz, rapid and classical, the organizers have added a second GMT Challengers tournament to the bill.
The top four finishers in each event will also have to play each other again in the classical time control with reversed colors. The organizers hope the extra games will ensure fairness and a worthy winner.
With an Elo average of over 2700, it makes the 57th edition of Biel one of the strongest since its inception. Across the festival which runs from July 13 to 26, there are also at least 12 other events for masters and amateurs including rapid, blitz, and Chess960 tournaments.
Headlining the main event, the GMT Masters, will be 18-year-old Indian sensation GM Praggnanandhaa Ramesbabu. By then the youngster, who competes in the FIDE Candidates in Toronto next month, could be a world championship challenger.
The same can be said for his sister GM Vaishali Rameshbabu, who will also take her place in the Women’s Candidates which runs alongside the Open in Toronto. She heads the lineup for Biel’s new GMT Challengers. Sadly, the two won’t be facing each other.
The GMT Masters
In the GMT Masters, Praggnanandhaa will face Germany’s top prospect on the world stage and national number-one GM Vincent Keymer.
The 19-year-old returns for the fifth time in a row and is hoping to win it for the first time. Last year he fell at the final hurdle, stumbling in the final round when he needed just a draw to win the event.
The current “King of Biel,” Vietnam’s former world blitz champion GM Liem Le, returns hoping for a hat-trick of tournament victories after his wins in 2023 and 2022. At 32, he is the oldest in the GMT Masters.
Three more rising stars complete the lineup. They are: GM Jakhovir Sindarov, the 18-year-old Uzbek talent who helped his country win gold at the 2022 FIDE Olympiad; the 23-year-old Armenian GM Haik Martirosyan; and GM Abhimanyu Mishra, the now 15-year-old who became the world’s youngest grandmaster aged 12 years, 4 months, and 25 days.
The GMT Challengers
In the Challengers, much attention will be focused on 22-year-old Vaishali, the only woman in the field, but the highest-rated player is 19-year-old GM Jonas Bjerre from Denmark, Europe’s second highest rated junior after Keymer.
Second in the seeding is GM Alexander Donchenko, the Moscow-born tournament regular who is now Germany’s number-three.
GM Salem Salah, considered the world’s best Arab player, is the oldest player in the field at 32. He has already appeared at Biel eight times.
The 2023 world junior champion GM Marc Andria Maurizzi lines up as the fifth seed. Maurizzi, now aged 16, is France’s top prospect and became the youngest French grandmaster in history in 2021 when he was awarded the title at age 14 years and five days.
The youngest in the field is 14-year-old Ukrainian prodigy Ihor Samunenkov, who was briefly the world’s youngest grandmaster when his title was confirmed by FIDE in January.
Overall, 10 of the 12 players in both tournaments are aged under 25, with the only players aged above that being Le and Saleh.
Festival Director Paul Kohler said: “I think that by introducing a final phase without players who have nothing more to expect in the tournament, and giving the finalists the opportunity for a rematch with reversed colors in the four-point matches, we are reaching the pinnacle of sporting fairness in chess.”
