European Women's Championships start in Gaziantep, Turkey

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.

Players at the opening ceremony in the Zeugma Museum watching...

... the colorful Turkish dance presentation

Afterwards round one is under way

Round one

The first round of the EIWCC started with a number of surprises for the favourites. The rating favorite IM Anna Muzychuk could have easily lost her game against a Russian IM rated over 250 points lower than her.

The start of Anastasia Savina vs Anna Muzychuk on board one

Anastasia Savina got a winning position but let her advantage slip away in time trouble. Anna's sister IM Mariya Muzychuk, as well as top Ukrainian GM, Katerina Lahno, played against Mamedjarova sisters from Azerbaijan, but could not take more than 50% as well.

The biggest upset was the white loss by second seed GM Nana Dzagnidze of Georgia to WIM Gulnar Mammadova, rated 235 points below her.

Another top player, IM Bela Khotenashvili, rated 2490, lost her white game to WIM Inna Ivakhinova, rated 2285. The most of other rating favorites managed to win in the first round, of which we today bring you the full results.

Addendum: Can Gurses drew our attention to an upset in the bottom part of the table: Russian WIM Aleksandra Goryachkina, 2341, lost to Hilal Ozturk, rated 1784. There are over 550 points between the two. "You guys never miss it when a Ukrainian or an Indian kid does anything extraordinary," Can writes. We apologise for missing this one, which was the only win by a Turkish player in round one. We discovered another upset at the bottom of the table:

Many-time Turkish Champion and top seed WGM Betul Cemre Yildiz, 2341, was only able to draw her first-round game against compatriot Yesim Patel, rated 1839, i.e. over 500 points below Betul.

German IM Elisabeth Pähtz, 2459, won her round one game against WGM Irina Chelushkina 2263

IM Almira Skripchenko (2468) FRA drew with black against WIM Marija Rakic (2270) SRB

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

Links Official tournament site All games from round one in PGN 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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