Humpy In Semi-Finals
By Arvind Aaron
Koneru Humpy made a grand 2-0 sweep of world cup champion Xu Yuhua of China
to dash into the semi-finals of the World Women's Championship being played
at Elista in Russia on May 30.
Other three players, Dzagnidze, Cmilyte and Kovalevskaya hitback with victories
to level the scores and force the tie-break. It is a big advantage of Humpy
for she becomes the first semi-finalist.
Trailing 0-1, Xu Yuhua could not get much with the white pieces against the
solid Caro-Kann defence of Humpy. Humpy had an outside passed pawn and Xu
Yuhua had the opportunity to take a draw by checks if she wanted. In the
queen and rook ending, Humpy won the white rook by threatening to queen her
pawn. Xu gave up playing a rook down and nearly succeeded. In a game decided
by sheer nerves, Humpy nearly lost. A rook blunder from her in the normal
course would have left her in the tie-break. Here, she lost the extra rook
and had to work to win in the queen ending. Having a pawn on the seventh
rank gave her a victory in a marathon ending.
It was a sweet revenge for Humpy who was knocked out by Xu Yuhua from the
Hyderabad 2002 World Cup. Other games are all in tie-break. World Junior
girls champion Dzagnidze of Georgia outplayed Stefanova of Bulgaria in a
42-move rook and bishop ending. Cmilyte kept the game sharp and uncomfortable
for Chiburdanidze all along to win a rook for knight and then force checkmate
in 42 moves with the white pieces.
Germany's Kachiani needed a draw with the white pieces but lost a pawn on
move 26 and a knight on move 32 to go down in 35 moves to Russia's Kovalevskaya.
Xu, Yuhua 0 - 1 Koneru, Humpy
Dzagnidze, Nana 1 - 0 Stefanova, Antoaneta
Cmilyte, Viktoria 1 - 0 Chiburdanidze, Maya
Kachiani-G., Ketino 0 - 1 Kovalevskaya, Ekaterina
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