It’s official. A very tough and exciting game today, but Alexandra Kosteniuk kept her cool and saw her way through the fireworks to a claim the highest female honors in chess. Congratulations!
Still looking for the ultimate Wordpress plugin for playing over *commented* games. If you know of one, please do tell.
Again, Kosteniuk outplayed her opponent in the early middlegame, only to be rebuffed in her conversion attempts by fine play in the latter stages. One thing’s for sure, Hou has great defensive technique.
A win today would’ve meant the title for Alexandra. Now, it heads to the last pressure-packed game, where she takes the White pieces into battle for another go at it.
Today’s game was a shocker. At first, with Hou Yifan having equalized easily out of the opening with Black, it looked like a draw was the most likely result. However, in such a short match, there’s hardly any time to catch one’s breath, so she pressed on in hopes of leveling the score. Alas, it only got her into trouble, and Kosteniuk, after 36.c4 and the exchange of queens which followed, appeared to be heading to a sure win. Such was not to be the case either. Clearly, Alexandra misplayed something. But just as clearly, Hou’s defense in the ensuing Rook and Pawn endgame is to be applauded.
Just look at that final position! Three pawns up yet no win in sight.
Today saw Game 1 of the Women’s World Chess Championship. In a masterful display of superior positional understanding, Alexandra Kosteniuk slowly constricted her young opponent from the Black side before unleashing a pawn- and game-winning combination.
As Sergey Shipov wrote in the 
Semifinal Bulletin,
“The women’s championship is far more interesting than men’s! Women always play aggressive chess. Nobody is over-cautious or uses the defensive approach. Being a man, it is a bit offensive for me to admit that the girls are much closer to the great medieval ideals…”
Koneru kept her nerve in the rapid tiebreakers bouncing back with a win in the second game to send it into double-overtime. Then Hou took over in the blitz games, taking the mini-match 4-2 and heading to the finals, where she’ll meet Alexandra Kosteniuk.
Here’s her first rapid win:
It’s obvious Black cannot take with the queen, but she’s up a pawn. See if you can find the winning line after 52…Kxc5.
Needing only a draw, Alexandra Kosteniuk happily forced a perpetual check from a position of superiority to clinch a berth in the finals, which thankfully will consist of four instead of two games. Still hardly the way to determine a champion, but what can you do?
In the other match, Humpy Koneru tied it up with a lucky win over Hou Yifan, when the latter allowed the opponent’s queen to penetrate her position (…Nxa5?).
“Hold on to your hats!” Tiebreak games tomorrow. 
A couple great fighting games today:
What do you think, is it a surprise, Hou’s victory today?
It’s a rest day today at the championships.
Need to catch up on the action before the semis?
No tiebreakers needed this round! That means, tomorrow, the ladies finally get a well-deserved rest day before the following formidable match-ups get underway:
The veteran Cramling could probably be seen as something of a surprise, but she played some rather efficient chess in taking advantage of an apparently out-of-form Stefanova.
Today’s games were particularly interesting to me on account of their openings. It’s always exciting to see a rising star like Hou Yifan playing a somewhat offbeat opening that with which you yourself have been known to tussle. In this case, the exchange Caro-Kann, with Bd3 as White. Can’t say that I’ve been all too successful with it, as Braden Bournival can happily attest. But, I enjoy the ease of development and simple plan, nonetheless.
The other game of import to me was Kosteniuk’s crush of Ushenina from the black side of a Nimzo-Indian. Having studied the awesome Chess Openings For Black with the idea of abandoning my beloved King’s Indian Defense (I still waver about ending that lifelong relationship, and return to it from time to time), the fireworks in this one impressed.
Ack! It doesn’t. 4…d5 is not its recommendation, and since it’s a repertoire book, it only has to give you a primary move or two against each variation of the opponent. I could’ve sworn I’d seen this whole wild 11.Be5 0-0 line in recent high-level play. Perhaps it was one of Kramnik’s games?
The round-of-16 FIDE bulletin is ready, and the quarterfinals are underway.
My pick for most exciting game of the day goes to Koneru’s for her well-calculated sacrificial (one piece after another) attack.
Junior 10.1 assigns exclamation marks to both 21.Bxg6 and 27.Nxd5. In other words, there’s no bluff to these shots!
