Humpy Stretched By Kosintseva
By Arvind Aaron
The crowd has thinned down in the world women's championship from 64 players
to eight. Koneru Humpy is on the move upwards after surviving a battle of
nerves when she needed the tie-break to down Russia's Kosintseva 2-0 after
the classical rating games resulted in a 1-1 deadlock.
Humpy failed in the reverse game and let go her overnight one point advantage
in round three by losing with the white pieces. Kosintseva shocked the top
seed by playing the Old Indian defence. The Russian lost the castling right
but had the upper hand in the opening. By move 23, all major pieces were
exchanged off. They were down to a rooks and minor piece ending. All of Kosintseva's
pieces were active and Humpy's were still in the blocks. Kosintseva played
well in the ending though play went direction less at times due to possible
time problems. Humpy had her king cut off and lost the ending after a marathon
78-move battle.
The tie-break belonged to Humpy though. She had the strong nerves in addition
to being the better player in quickplay. In a queen and bishop ending, the
Russian opened up the closed position for Humpy's queen to do the damage.
Until the final game, no player had won with the white pieces. It had been
a blackwash so far. Humpy reversed that trend to use her passed queen pawn
to tie-up a black rook and win with commanding play.
Nana Dzagnidze blanked her team mate Maia Lomineishvili 2-0 for a place
in the last eight. Maya Chiburdanidze also used her experience to down Jana
Jackova (Cz) by 1.5-0.5. Germany's Ketino Kachiani beat Natasha Bojkovic
by that 1.5-0.5 margin and that left half the games to be decided in play
off. So, three of the first four qualifiers for the quarter finals had Georgian
origin. China's last hope, 2000 world cup winner, Xu Yuhua benefited from
a piece blunder from Germany's Elisabeth Paehtz to win the match 1.5-0.5
and become the next qualifier.
Results from the FIDE site:
Results Round 3 Game 2
Koneru, Humpy 0-1 Kosintseva, Tatiana
Dzagnidze, Nana 1-0 Lomineishvili, Maia
Chiburdanidze, Maia 1/2 Jackova, Jana
Kachiani-G., Ketino 1/2 Bojkovic, Natasa
Lahno, Kateryna 1-0 Kovalevskaya, Ekaterina
Cmilyte, Viktorija 1/2 Cramling, Pia
Stefanova, Antoaneta 1/2 Zhukova, Natalia
Xu, Yuhua 1-0 Paehtz, Elisabeth
Results Round 3 Tiebreak
Kosintseva, Tatiana 0-1, 0-1 Koneru, Humpy
Lahno, Kateryna 1/2 0-1 Kovalevskaya, Ekaterina
Cmilyte, Viktorija 1/2 1/2 Cramling, Pia
Stefanova, Antoaneta 1-0 0-1 Zhukova, Natalia
Download the games
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