Echesspedia

Bilingual city of Switzerland (Biel in German and English, Bienne in French), near the capital Bern, where the Interzonals of 1976, 1985 and 1993 were organized.

The festival started in 1968 under the direction of Hans Suri and his team. The first grandmaster tournament was held in 1977 and won by Tony Miles.
The Festival including about ten tournaments is set up in the second half of July without any break since 1968.

Since 1998 a new committee under the leadership of Peter Burri, director, Peter Bohnenblust and Olivier Breisacher, took the responsibility to continue the traditional event.

The winners from the grandmaster tournaments were: 1976 Bent Larsen, 1977 Tony Miles, 1979 Viktor Korchnoi, 1980 Yehuda Grunfeld, 1981 Vlastimil Hort & Eric Lobron, 1982 Gheorghiu & Nunn, 1983 Miles & John Nunn, 1984 Vlastimil Hort & Robert Hubner, 1985 Rafael Vaganian, 1986 Eric Lobron & Lev Polugaevsky, 1987 Boris Gulko, 1988 Boris Gulko & Ivan Sokolov, 1989 Vasily Ivanchuk & Lev Polugaevsky, 1990 Anatoly Karpov, 1991 Alexey Shirov, 1992 Anatoly Karpov, 1993 Boris Gelfand, 1994 Viktor Gavrikov, 1995 Dreev, 1996 Anatoly Karpov & Vadim Milov, 1997 Vishy Anand, 1998 Mladen Palac,1999 Jeroen Piket, 2000 Peter Svidler, 2001 Viktor Korchnoi, 2002 Ilya Smirin, 2003 Alexander Morozevich, 2004 Alexander Morozevich. 2005 Andrei Volokitin and Boris Gelfand, 2006 Alexander Morozevich, 2007 Magnus Carlsen, 2008 Evgenij Alekseev, 2009 Maxime Vachier Lagrave, 2010 Fabiano Caruana, 2011 Magnus Carlsen.