Women’s World Chess Championship 2012 starts on Friday

The Women’s World Chess Cup 2012 will be staged by the Ugorian Chess Academy from 11 November to 2 December. The best 64 chess players in the world will take part in the competition, which consist of six knock-out rounds which reduce the participants from 64 to 32, 16, 8, 4, and 2. The winner will play a match against the winner of FIDE Women’s Grand Prix 2011-2012 (Hou Yifan), which will determine the World Champion among women.

Among the 64 participants of the World Champion 2011 are Hou Yifan from China; the WWCh Finalist 2011 Humpy Konery, India; World Girl Junior Champions Anna Muzychuk, Slovenia, 2010, and Deysi Cori, Peru, 2011; the best chess players in the FIDE rating list Judit Polgar, 2704, Hungary, Nana Dzagnidze, 2536 and Maia Chiburdanidze, 2500, Georgia; players qualified from the Continental, Dronavalli Harika, India, 2011, and the Zonal Championships Irina Berezina, Australia and Swaminathan Soumya, India; and also the nominees of the FIDE President.

Ten strong chess players will represent Russia in the competition: players with high FIDE rating Valentina Gunina (2498) and Alisa Galliamova (2491); players from European Women’s Championships 2010 and 2011 Tatiana and Nadezhda Kosintseva, Natalija Pogonina, Svetlana Matveeva, Ekaterina Kovalevskaya, Anastasia Bodnaruk, Evgenija Ovod and Marina Romanko.

The venue

The Ugra Chess Academy was built by OJSC «Gazprom neft» through the program «Gazprom for children». Modern energy conserving technologies were used in the construction of the unique three-level building which has no sharp corners and is styled as a chess piece. It was built in the capital of Ugra during two years and designed by the famous Dutch architect Erick Van Egeraat.

The construction started in 2008 and finished in 2010. The area of the building is 2845 m², consisting of class rooms and different halls equipped the last word in education and IT technologies. The Chess Academy consists of two classrooms, a computer room with 25 stations, a hall, a café-bar, and a room with items of children’s crafts on the topic of chess on the ground floor. Almost the whole first floor is occupied by an event hall with 128 seats, and service rooms. This building allows competitions of up to 300 chess players at the same time. In September 2010 the General Assembly and the 81st FIDE Congress took place in the Academy as a part of the 39th World Chess Olympiad, and in August 2010 the World Chess Cup 2011 was staged here.

The 64 participants

Prize fund

The Championship has a total prize fund of US $450,000. Every player gets 3750 Euros, those who make it to round two get 5500 Euros, for round three it is 8000 Euros, round four 12,000 Euros, round five (semifinals) 20,000 Euros, the silver medalist 30,000 Euros, and the winner 60,000 Euros.

Where it is

Khanty-Mansiysk is an oil boom town, located on the eastern bank of the Irtysh River, 15 kilometers (9.3 mi) from its confluence with the Ob. Population: 80,000.

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How to get there

The nearest airports to Khanty-Mansiysk are Tyumen, Yekaterinburg, Novosibirsk, Omsk, Surgut, Nizhnevartovsk. The air companies «Utair» and «Transaero» make the regular flights from Moscow to Khanty-Mansiysk.

The nearest railway stations to Khanty-Mansiysk are Pyt-Yah (270 km away from Khanty-Mansiysk) and Surgut (300 km away from Khanty-Mansiysk). Every day more than ten trains from different cities of Russia pass through Pyt-Yah and Surgut. In addition there are daily buses and minibuses that depart from railway stations Pyt-Yah and Surgut to Khanty-Mansiysk, at interval of 2-3 hours. Travel time is about three hours. If you plan on visiting the Championship you will find all necessary travel information here.

The official tournament hotel is the Olympic, with full booking information here

Links Official tournament site All games in PGN The games will be 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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