Gaziantep: Muzychuk falters, Gunina wins EIWCC title

The European Individual Women Chess Championships are being held from 2 to 13 March, 2012, in the Anatolian Hotel in Gaziantep, Turkey. The event will be followed by the European Rapid Championship and European Blitz Championship (15-18 of March). The EIWCC consists of eleven games. The rate of is 90 minutes for 40 moves plus 30 minutes for the rest of the game with an increment of 30 seconds per move, starting from move one. Games start at 16:00h local time.

Organizers and prize fund: The Turkish Chess Federation, with the sponsorship and support of the Gaziantep Metropolitan Municipality, under the auspices of the City of Gaziantep and the European Chess Union, provided a prize fund of 150,000 Euro for all three events. This is the biggest prize fund in the history of European Women's Chess events. For the first time in the chess history the European Women's Champion will get a higher prize sum, 20,500 Euros, than the Champion of the (Open or "Men's") European Individual Championship, which will be held in Plovdiv after this event.

After ten rounds of the Championship the following players were in contention for first place and the medals:

The final (eleventh) round turned out to be as thrilling as expected. All the attention naturally turned to the top boards, which would produce the medallists of the EIWCC and also decide the participants of the World Cup. GM Anna Muzychuk, was leading one point ahead of the nearest pursuers, and was the natural favourite. But she had black against her nearest rival, Russian IM Valentina Gunina.

Another important for the final standings game was played between Tatiana Kosintseva and Nana Dzagnidze. The Russian player also needed to win in order to share the first place. Playing with black pieces she started to push h-pawn, destroyed the coordination of white pieces and converted her advantage into full point.

As a result of these two games Valentina Gunina, Anna Muzychuk and Tatiana Kosintseva all shared first place with 8.5/11 points. But the best performance gave Valentina Gunina the title. Tatiana Kosintseva placed second and Anna Muzychuk third. 14 players qualifed for the World Cup.

Top final standings (after eleven rounds) 

• Full results with all 103 players here

The closing ceremony of the European Individual Women's Chess Championship took place in the Anatolian Hotel in Gaziantep. It was attended by FIDE Vice-President and President of TCF Ali Nihat Yazici, Honorary President of ECU Boris Kutin and the Deputy General Secretary of Gaziantep Metropolitan Municipality Ibrahim Evrim.

The winners Valentina Gunina, Tatiana Kosintseva and Anna Muzychuk (thankfully
flaunting the ECU dress code) were awarded cups, medals and prizes.

TCF President and EIWCC organiser Ali Nihat Yazici shows
that he, too, is quite relaxed about the new dress rules

Remaining schedule

All photos by WGM Anastasiya Karlovich, with kind permission of the TCF

Links Official tournament site Games in PGN: R01, R02, R03, R04, R05, R06, R07, R08 All games (zipped). The game file is non-standard (e.g. first half in CAPS) and will be cleaned up at the end of the event. The games are being broadcast live on the official web site and on the chess server Playchess.com. If you are not a member you can download a free Playchess client there and get immediate access. You can also use ChessBase 11 or any of our Fritz compatible chess programs.

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