I don't plan to cover this event except in passing, but it's an interesting enough tournament that those of you looking for some high-level chess action between now and the Sinquefield Cup may want to have a look. The headliners for the 2017 edition of the Biel GM Tournament are nominally Pentala Harikrishna, David Navara, and Etienne Bacrot, but for those of us who go back 5-10 years the names of Ruslan Ponomariov, Peter Leko, and Alexander Morozevich are just as eye-catching. Hou Yifan is also playing, and in addition to Swiss players Nico Georgiadis and Noel Studer there's a real old-timer, Rafael Vaganian. (This Armenian legend used to compete with Anatoly Karpov in junior events.) After two rounds, Bacrot, Ponomariov, and Hou are tied for first with 1.5/2.
Speaking of Karpov, there was a preliminary rapid event there on Sunday with an overlapping but not identical cast of characters, and Karpov was one of the participants. It was a knockout event (best of two, with an Armaggedon game if needed in the third game), and Harikrishna defeated Navara 1.5-.5 in the final. In the quarterfinal Navara defeated Hou in the Armageddon game, winning games 1 and 3 with White. Morozevich beat Karpov 1.5-.5, Yannick Pelletier shut out Vaganian 2-0, and Harikrishna defeated 73-year-old Vlastimil Hort 1.5-.5. In the semis Harikrishna beat Pelletier 2-0 while Navara beat Morozevich 1.5-.5, and Harikrishna won the final, as noted above.