Hou Yifan is overall winner of Women’s Grand Prix 2009-2011
Wednesday, 09 March 2011 07:15
After a grueling fourteen days of hard fought chess, Women World Champion, Hou Yifan of China emerged overall winner of the first Women Grand Prix series. The regulation of three best results meant that her first place in Ulaanbaatar and second places in Nalchik and Istanbul (joint) gave her the edge over her nearest rival GM Humpy Koneru of India. This crowns a very successful period for Hou Yifan who also won the World Championship in December 2010.
Doha proved a worthwhile battleground for four former world champions as well as 5 Grandmasters making this one of the strongest women tournaments of all times. With the nail biting finish witnessed in Doha, GM Humpy Koneru has obtained the right to play a match later on this year against GM Hou Yifan for the World Championship title. GM Dzagnidze of Georgia went to Doha with a slender lead over Koneru and started quite well beating her main rival in the first round. However, a number of losses after this sank her chances of finishing in the top three places and GM Koneru clawed back, round by round, to tie for first place with GM Danielian of Armenia. GM Elena Danielian surprised everybody, as she had done also in Istanbul, and took off leaving everybody far behind. However, a critical loss against GM Koneru allowed the latter to close the gap and eventually catch her.
The overall results of the six grand prix tournaments saw a total of 396 games being played and just under 66% of the games resulted in a decisive result. The highest number of wins (46) was registered in the first event in Istanbul, Turkey followed by the last event in Doha, Qatar (45 wins). No games were defaulted.
The tournament by tournament results and overall standings are as follow:
TOURNAMENT TABLES
OVERALL STANDINGS
Why Tatiana Kosintseva only played in 3 events?
Totally unfair that Tatiana Kosintseva was ruled out of the last leg!
She withdrew from the Nanjing and was replaced by Ju Wenjung.