Friday March 11, 2011
Chess prodigies vie for women’s world crown
ChessBy Quah Seng Sun
Former child prodigy emerges as new challenger for the women’s world chess crown.
THE biggest prize in women’s chess is the women’s world chess championship crown.
Right now, it sits pretty with Hou Yifan, the 17-year-old wonder lass from China. She won it last December at the women’s world chess championship in Turkey and she is not due to defend her crown – and the title – until the third quarter of this year.
But against whom is Yifan going to defend her title?
Has a challenger already been determined?
The answer to both questions is, yes. India’s Koneru Humpy, 24, has just won the right to challenge Yifan for the women’s chess crown.
I got pretty excited the first time I heard it last week. It’s unprecedented that both defending champion and challenger in an official world title match come from this part of the world. (Never mind the fact that the men’s world chess title is also being held by another Asian chess giant, Viswanathan Anand.)
Like Yifan, Koneru was also a chess prodigy. In 2002, at the age of 15 years and two months, Koneru qualified for the full-fledged grandmaster chess title. (Only Yifan was younger, at 14 years, six months.)
Koneru became the official challenger when she won the sixth and final leg of the FIDE women’s grand prix 2009-2011 in Doha, Qatar, last week. Before this final leg began, Koneru was languishing fourth in the grand prix standings and her chances of qualifying actually looked quite bleak.
During the first half of the tournament itself, her play was rather insipid and she scored only 2½ points from her first five games. If she had any remaining hopes of qualifying, she would have to depend greatly not only on the results of the other players in the tournament but also her own rearguard action.
But what a magnificent fight-back for her! In the second half of the event, she scored 5½ points from her final six games, which brought her total tally of points to eight from 11 games. Inexplicably also, the front runners suddenly lost steam at about the same time.
Before the start of the tournament’s final round, Koneru was still only in second place half a point behind the tournament trailblazer, Elina Danielian. Koneru needed a win to have any chance of tying for first place and she got it from her final-round opponent, the 2001 women’s world champion, Zhu Chen.
In the meantime, Elina had already agreed to a quick draw with Antoaneta Stefanova. Apparently, she was satisfied with this result although a win would make her the undisputed winner of the tournament. The draw meant that at worst, she would finish on equal points with Koneru, although the tie-break would be in the Indian grandmaster’s favour.
Calculating the grand points was more complicated but in the end, Koneru’s success in this tournament meant that she leapfrogged several places over other contenders to finish second in the standings.
Full article here.
Go Humpy!