Favourites fall at the Women’s World Championship round two

The Women’s World Chess Cup 2012 is being staged by the Ugorian Chess Academy in Khanty-Mansiysk from 11 November to 2 December. The best 64 chess players in the world are taking part in the competition, which consist of six knock-out rounds of two games, which reduce the participants from 64 to 32, 16, 8, 4, and 2. The final consists of four games, 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.

Round two

In this round a number of top seeds were sensationally eliminated. The biggest shock came with the knockout of women's world champion Hou Yifan by GM Monika Socko, 150 points below her on the rating scale. Hou won the first game with black, but Socko came back with a black victory in the second game. In the rapid chess tiebreaks she won both her games, eliminating the second seed in this event.

Hou Yifan in her second regular games agains Monika Socko, which the Chinese GM lost

The second shocker came when world championship challenger Humpy Koneru lost her first game with the white pieces against Natalia Zhukova, fully 159 points behind her in the November FIDE ratings.

Zhukova,Natalia (2451) - Koneru,Humpy (2610) [E94]
FIDE WCh Women World Cup Khanty-Mansiysk RUS (2.2), 15.11.2012
1.d4 g6 2.e4 Bg7 3.c4 d6 4.Nc3 Nd7 5.Nf3 e5 6.Be2 Ngf6 7.0-0 0-0 8.Be3 Re8 9.d5 Nh5 10.g3 Bf8 11.Ne1 Ng7 12.Nd3 Be7 13.Qd2 c5 14.a3 f5 15.f3 h5 16.b4 b6 17.a4 a5 18.bxc5 bxc5 19.Qc2 Bf6 20.Nf2 Nb8 21.Rad1 Ra7 22.Nb5 Rf7 23.Bd2 Na6 24.Bxa5 Qxa5 25.Nxd6 Ra7 26.Nxe8 Nxe8 27.exf5 gxf5

Here in a relatively equal position Natalia Zhukova played 28.f4? Instead of replying with 28...Nb4 29.Qb1 e4! with excellent winning chances Humpy went for 28...exf4 and soon lost her advantage and the game. 29.gxf4 Nd6 30.Kh1 Qc3 31.Rg1+ Kf8 32.Qxc3 Bxc3 33.Rg6 Ne4 34.Nxe4 fxe4 35.Rdg1 Bg7 36.Bxh5 e3 37.Rd6 Bd7 38.Rg3 Bd4 39.Rdg6 Bf5 40.Rg8+ Ke7 41.R3g7+ Kd6 42.Rxa7 Be4+ 43.Rg2 1-0.

Third seed Anna Muzychuk drew both her regular games against Anna Ushenina, 134 Elo points below her, and then went on to lose both the rapid chess tiebreak games. With this the three highest ranked players had been eliminated in round two.

Fourth seed Zhao Xue (above right) has a close call against Nino Khurtsidze of Georgia. After winning her first game the Chinese GM lost the second and had to go into the tiebreaks. There she won the first rapid game and drew the second to progress to round three.

Another high seed, GM Kateryna Lahno (above left), rated 2553, was eliminated in
the regular games by Lela Javakhishvili, a hundred points below her on the rating scale

Viktorija Cmilyte, rated 2524, was knocked out by Huang Qian of China, rated 2465

Former women's world champion Alexandra Kosteniuk was eliminated by her
compatriot Natalija Pogonina in the regular games

Indian GM Harika Dronavalli knocked out GM Elina Danielian of Armenia

Goodbye to Khanty Mansiysk

Here are portraits of some of the players who were eliminated in round two of the Women's World Championship and who we will not be seeing in subsequent reports.

Credit: The extraordinary pictures above were supplied by the official web site and were made by Anna Burtasova, Etery Kublashvili, Vladimir Barsky and local photographers. Many more images are to be found here.

The live video coverage is provided by Mark Gluhovsky from ChessTV. There will be English language commentary by GM Alexander Khalifman. For the first time Mark is going to try to supply commentary in Chinese: GM Peng Zhaoqing speaking from her home in Holland. The Russian commentary will come from GM Sergei Shipov, working out of Moscow.

Links Official tournament site All games in PGN: R1 – R2 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.

Copyright ChessBase