North Urals Cup: Ladies Super-Tournament

The North Urals Cup 2005 is the third international super-tournament for female chess players! It is being held in Krasnoturyinsk, a city is located in the north of Sverdlovsk area, 426 Kms from the regional center Ekaterinburg (Yekaterinburg).

This is the cultural center of Northern Ural and the home of a number of outstanding Russian scientists. More...

The tournament is a round robin with ten very strong female chess players, amongst them the current women's world champion Antoaneta Stefanova (2501, BUL), five times world champion Maia Chiburdanidze (2509, GEO), Russian Women's champion Alexandra Kosteniuk (2516, RUS), former Russian women's champion Alisa Galliamova (2453, RUS), European women's champion 2000 Natalia Zhukova (2478, UKR), India's top female player Koneru Humpy and top seed (2531, IND). The average rating of the tournament is 2490. Data of all participants...

Press conference with the head of "BAZ" Alexander Aminov, women's world champion Antoaneta Stefanova, FIDE Vice President Andrey Selivanovand and former women's world champion Maya Chiburdanidze

FIDE Deputy President Georgios Makropoulos with Koneru Humpy and the very talented Chinese WGM Xu Yuhua.

In the first round of the event Alexandra Kosteniuk, the reigning Russian women's champion, beat her predecessor Tatiana Kosintseva, Russia champion of 2004. Alisa Galliamova (RUS) defeated Maia Chiburdanidze, all other games were drawn. In the second round Tatiana Kosintseva lost again, this time to Ekatrina Kovalevskaya, Antoaneta Stefanova defeated Natalia Zhukova, and Koneru Humpy beat Alisa Galliamova.

Reports on each round may be found on the English news page of the official web site. Games can be picked up in PGN format on the tournament page.

Standings after two rounds

• All games played so far in PGN

Picture gallery

The official web site has a lot of excellent photos, all provided by Vadim Smalkov. Here is a small selection – in many cases you can click on the pictures to get Vadim's high-resolution originals. At the bottom of the page you will find links to sources where you can find many more pictures. Only a small number of them are captioned, so you must guess who or what is shown in them.

Presentation on the stage at the openings ceremony

Children's presentation with solo and chorus singing

Players and dignitaries together on the stage.

Links

• The official web site
  There are lots of excellent pictures, some with captions in Russian and English, daily English language reports, results, games, live coverage. This is a great tournament web site with exemplary navigation. You can spend a few hours going through everything.

  Contact: Press officer: Natalia Khamidova
  Tel: +7 (34314) 3-67-34
  Email: direction (at) bk.ru