Here we go again, more upsets in round 2.
Sebag, Marie (FRA) ½-½ Koneru, Humpy (IND)
Cramling, Pia (SWE) 0-1 Peng, Zhaoqin (NED)
Ushenina, Anna (UKR) ½-½ Xu, Yuhua (CHN)
Khurtsidze, Nino (GEO) ½-½ Arribas, Maritza (CUB)
Hou, Yifan (CHN) 1-0 Zhukova, Natalia (UKR)
Javakhishvili, Lela (GEO) 1-0 Vijayalakshmi, Subbaraman (IND)
Dzagnidze, Nana (GEO) ½-½ Ju, Wenjun (CHN)
Cmilyte, Viktorija (LTU) ½-½ Ruan, Lufei (CHN)
Qin, Kanying (CHN) ½-½ Houska, Jovanka (ENG)
Lujan, Carolina (ARG) 1-0 Galliamova, Alisa (RUS)
American IM Irina Krush lost her first round’s game to Tatiana Kosintseva of Russia. She will have White tomorrow to try to even up the score.
As I mentioned many times before, it is exciting to have knockout tournaments such as the World Cup but NOT for the World Championship. FIDE has changed this for the World Championship? When will they change it for the Women’s Championship? Two games cannot possibly be long enough to determine the best player.
That is my same complaint about the US Championship this year. It was an exiting tournament but the rapid championship match took away some of its thunder. Please! Let’s respect the INTEGRITY of the game and prestigious titles such as the World Championship or National Championship. 
2 games are 2 times more than one final hundred meter athletic olympic race!?
A month ago, Peter Svidler openly wished from FIDE to “stop meddling with the time controls”. What USCF did gets them on the top of the list, too bad no comment from Svidler here. On the other hand, this approach defends chess as chess. Don’t Grandmaster players spend thousands of hours playing bullet games on ICC, lowering themselves as much as possible, risking and losing games to anybodies and everybodies? Some low class players now advertise themselves having beaten GMs on ICC!! And ICC is not for fun for them. I saw one weak player who claims he beat Torre, among others. There is no chess player in the world who played more classical chess games than rapid and blitz ones. Maybe Botvinnik?
Alexandra Kosteniuk interview:
” …. -How do you evaluate the knock-out system of world championships?
There are its positive and negative sides. I think it is wiser, as it is done in men cycles, to have knock-out system in the World Cup, and then challenger matches and match-tournament for the World Champion title. Whatever you may say, knock-out system has a great probability of chance, and you have no right for mistake. In my opinion, we need a longer tournament to find out a real champion. On the other hand a knock-out system is first of all spectacular. If the tournament is more interesting it can attract more spectators. In this case of course you should count more on chance, but I believe that the strongest wins and you should deserve that success…”
For little kids, there are usually only two outcomes of a game – either I won or You cheated! Chess players are much more mature than that – the endings of their games, especially at the club level, are due to either I won or You were lucky!
Another nice article with a GM Susan quote at http://www.eastvalleytribune.com/index.php?sty=61088