The Biel Chess Festival's main event this year was a Young Grandmasters tournament, featuring some of the world's top young players. Fitting for an event featuring exciting young talent, the ending of the event took some work, as there was a three way tie which required a series of games to determine a winner.
At the end of round-robin play, three players stood at 5.5/9 -- Fabiano Caruana, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, and Nguyen Ngoc Truong Son of Vietnam. As the young Vietnamese prodigy had the best tiebreakers, Caruana and Vachier-Lagrave had to play an Armageddon game to determine who would join him in the final tiebreak match. Caruana took the black pieces, and needing only a draw to advance, actually won the game outright to earn his shot at the title. Caruana went on to win a two game rapid match 1.5-0.5 to claim the title.
Caruana is definitely a player on the rise, having passed by the 2700 mark on the latest live rating list. While his childhood years were spent in the United States, he now trains out of Switzerland, and plays for Italy in international events, as he shares dual citizenship between Italy and the US. At only 18, Caruana has already won the Italian Chess Championship twice, and is definitely a player to keep an eye on in the coming years; while he may be somewhat behind the early progress of a Carlsen or Karjakin, he has certainly shown more than enough ability and growth to make him a potential factor at the highest levels of the game.
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