Friday 3 February 2012

Fairy tale ending Short-circuited

Last year about this time, after the Tradewise Gibraltar Chess Festival I posted a rant about the Australasian Chess Crisis which touched on women's chess. A lively debate followed in the comments section where I made the following prediction.

"Anyway the young girls playing top level chess are getting better and better now and soon our conversation here will seem antiquated. In the next few years when Ho Yifan and her contemporaries rip the arms and legs off their male colleagues, girls will be inspired to do the same".


                                                         Never miss an opportunity to gloat!
I must admit however that I never expected that my "prophecy" would come true less than a year later. Women's World Chess Champion Hou Yifan has tied for first in the 10th Tradewise, Queens Diamond Jubilee, Gibraltar Masters Open.

Hou Yifan got to 8 points out of 10 first and then had to wait to see if anyone could catch her and force a 
play-off for the title. Nigel Short climbed that mountain by beating the higher rated Krishnan Sasikiran with black. He then ruined the script by winning the two game rapid play-off.

GM Simon Williams added that extra touch with his Video commentary. Many players joined him every day to show their games or comment on games still in progress. There are many hours of the best, most entertaining chess lessons you will ever get and all for free. I hope you leave it up there a while, and yes, I am talking to you Stewart Conquest!

Long time readers will remember this post and I hope you remembered it for Nana  Dzagnidze's masterpiece. She started like a rocket but then got slowed down a little by the 2700 gauntlet she had to face.


Rd.Bo.SNoNameRtgFEDPts.Res.
141110WGMSoumya Swaminathan2280IND6.0w ½
235116Chapman Terry P D2253ENG5.0s 1
324181Compton Alistair2051NZL4.5w 1
41126GMFier Alexandr2603BRA5.5s 1
5410GMMovsesian Sergei2700ARM7.0w 1
6211GMSasikiran Krishnan2700IND7.0w ½
7415GMShort Nigel D2677ENG8.0s ½
861GMSvidler Peter2749RUS7.0w 0
91212GMVachier-Lagrave Maxime2699FRA6.0s ½
101213GMSargissian Gabriel2683ARM7.0w 0


Look at what she did to this poor unsuspecting 2600 GM.




Lastly I must mention my celebrity guest ranter from the aforementioned post, Arianne Caoili who just won the Tata steel Tienkampen 2B round robin. Unfortunately I cannot find her games on the site, which btw could learn something from Gibraltar, and she has not sent me the pgns yet as requested so I cannot show you any games.


                              It seems all three ladies have gotten the "Doubleroo bump" Have a nice weekend!



3 comments:

  1. Yifan Hou vs Judit Polgar, Tradewise Gibraltar 2012 - what a crush!

    http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1655416

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    1. btw - one of Phil's favourite (joking) maxims was "kick where you see a head" - so I point out...it is Stuart Conquest!

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  2. Thanks for these links, Alex. This commentary is surprisingly entertaining. Well, "surprisingly" to me. :)

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