Women’s World Championship – Ushenina in the semis

The Women’s World Chess Cup 2012 is being staged by the Ugorian Chess Academy in Khanty-Mansiysk from 11 November to 2 December. The best 64 chess players in the world are taking part in the competition, which consist of six knock-out rounds of two games, which reduce the participants from 64 to 32, 16, 8, 4, and 2. The final consists of four games, the winner will play a match against the winner of FIDE Women’s Grand Prix 2011-2012 (Hou Yifan), which will determine the World Champion among women.

Round four

The first game between Nadezhda Kosintseva (Russia) and Anna Ushenina (Ukraine) was extremely nervous and full of action. The players castled to the opposite sides of the board and began preparing for mutual attacks.

Trouble in the middlegame: IM Anna Ushenina was lucky that her opponent ...

... GM Nadezhda Kosintseva missed a clear win and let Anna slip away with a draw

In the second game Anna sacrificed a pawn and, after Nadezhda some imprecise moves by her opponent won it back with a decisive advantage. For the first time in her life the 27-year-old Ukrainian IM has advanced to the semifinals of such an event.

Former women's world champion Antoaneta Stefanova (Bulgaria) lost her first game at this championship. She was defeated by Marie Sebag (France) in a Closed Anti-Marshall, where Stefanova, playing black, obtained a small advantage. However, she did not utilize all the benefits of her position and allowed White to make a break in the center. After that Stefanova lost the thread of the game and started making mediocre moves, while her opponent played flawlessly and increased the advantage. Being in time trouble Stefanova committed a blunder and soon resigned.

French GM Marie Sebag during her first game of round four

In the second must-win game the Bulgarian GM turned the tables...

In their first encounter in round four Zhao Xue (China) and Harika Dronavalli (India) played a good positional game. The Indian demonstrated an opening variation that was specially prepared for the championship, and equalized easily. The game quickly transposed to a symmetrical ending, where Black sacrificed a pawn for the initiative. However, White parried all threats, and the game ended peacefully.

The second game between was very dramatic. The Indian was better after the opening, but then started to make mistakes and lost a pawn. After a long maneuvere Black won another pawn. By that time White’s position was basically hopeless. But the Indian player began to set up traps...

Ju Wenjun (China), playing white, selected a very sharp variation of the King's Indian against her compatriot Huang Qian. In the previous match Ju had faced this line as black against Natalia Zhukova, and probably liked White’s options. However, it seems she hadn’t studied it well enough. White made an exchange sacrifice early in the game, but did not receive full compensation for it and were forced to defend. Black returned the exchange and kept an extra pawn, however, Huang Qian was unable to convert her advantage and eventually had to settle for a draw.

The second game was the shortest of the round and, possibly, the championship. The players went for a peaceful opening variation and agreed to a draw on 17th move. The all-Chinese quarterfinal will continue tomorrow in the tiebreak.

All results of round four

Credit: The above report was based on article published by the official web site, which has some extraordinary pictures, were made by Anna Burtasova, Etery Kublashvili, Vladimir Barsky and local photographers. Many more images are to be found here.

The live video coverage is provided by Mark Gluhovsky from ChessTV. There will be English language commentary by GM Alexander Khalifman. For the first time Mark is going to try to supply commentary in Chinese: GM Peng Zhaoqing speaking from her home in Holland. The Russian commentary will come from GM Sergei Shipov, working out of Moscow.

Links Official tournament site All games in PGN: R1 – R2 – R3 – R4 The games will be broadcast live on the official web site and on the chess server Playchess.com. If you are not a member you can download a free Playchess client there and get immediate access. You can also use ChessBase 11 or any of our Fritz compatible chess programs.

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