Humpy out of world championship

Nalchik (Russia) (PTI): Grandmaster Koneru Humpy bowed out of the World Women Chess Championship succumbing to 14-year old Yifan Hao of China in the blitz tiebreak games of the semi-finals here on Friday.

Humpy rose back to level scores twice but Yifan emerged as the better player in the blitz games where she won both the tiebreak games and advanced to the finals where she now meets Alexandra Kosteniuk of Russia.

Alexandra had beaten Pia Cramling of Sweden in the other semifinal.

This is the second time in three world championships that Humpy was ousted in the semis. Earlier in 2004, Ekaterina Kovaleskaya of Russia had ousted the Indian star. In the 2006 championship, Humpy had gone out in the second round itself.

Tension and drama was expected in the tiebreak games and the spectators were not devoid of it. Humpy lost the first game of the day playing black under rapid chess rules but came back from a bad position to beat Yifan in the second game.

That set the stage for the rapid games where Yifan won first game with black and kept her cool in the middle of wild complexities in the second.

Humpy had to win to reach the sudden death game but that never happened as Yifan exchanged almost at will to reach a position of strength in the rook and pawns endgame.

Source: Hindu.com

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