Tashkent 01: Favorites prevail

The Tashkent Women's Grand Prix is currently being held in Uzbekistan from September 17th - October 1st. The tournament is part of the Women's World Championship cycle that will determine the next challenger for the world title. The twelve player round robin will feature the standard FIDE time control of 90 minutes for the first 40 moves, with 30 minutes being added at that point and an additional 30 seconds per move through the entire game.

Round 1

President Kirsan making the opening move

Round one was marked by a series of mistakes caused by time pressure. The players will have to do better with their clock situations if they are to stabilize their results. After the third hour past the mark when Kirsan Ilyumzhinov played the opening moves in the game Muminova-Zhao Xue, most games were still in the middlegame when they should have been reaching the 40th move mark.

Danielian, Elina ½-½ Kosteniuk, Alexandra
Kosteniuk was able to gradually equalize a position that is very slightly favorable to White from the opening. This topical type of position with the isolated queen's pawn is annoying to play for black, but the Russian player managed to do quite well. Near time pressure she commmitted a mistake and Danielian picked up four (!) pawns for a knight. Strangely though she decided to repeat moves and take a draw in a position it would seem only White was playing for a win.

Koneru, Humpy 1-0 Ju Wenjun
The highest rated player in the event won this game mainly due to persistence. The Chinese player was inferior the whole game but eventually managed to reach an opposite colored bishop endgame with rooks that was only symbolically better for Koneru. However this small edge coupled with some mistakes by Ju Wenjun allowed Koneru to convert the endgame.

Persistence! Despite the drawish nature of the endgame, Koneru was able to pull ahead at the end

Lagno, Kateryna ½-½ Girya, Olga
Lagno obtained the smallest of advantages in a strange Caro-Kann. However Girya kept playing well and aggressively and was able to neutralize Lagno's main asset: the pair of bishops. With that gone the game eventually was drawn.

"It was a surprise for me" were the words of the Russian chess player on White's 2.Ne2, despite the fact that it has been played by several strong players including Hou Yifan and Gashimov.

Lagno-Girya was one of the games in which no huge evaluation swings were seen

Stefanova, Antoaneta 1-0 Nahkbayeva, Gulishkan (above)
Stefanova is known for her very unorthodox openings, especially when she is using the white pieces. In this case this opening yielded less than nothing and it was the Kazakh player that quickly seized the upper hand. A beautiful intermezzo on move 14...Nf3+! crippled White's pawns and gave Black the strategical plus. However little by little Nakhbayeva let go of her advantage and in time trouble even blundered, something that the ex-World Champion did not forgive.

The players go to the press conference immediately following the game. To the left is photographer, reporter and translator Maria Emelianova

Dronavalli, Harika 1-0 Khotenashvili, Bela
What could have been an interesting game was marred by tactical mistakes. Black blundered the game away with Qd6, but White, instead of finishing off the job with precision, kept allowing Khotenashvili to find resources. Eventually however the Georgian blundered one last time and it was finally lights out.

Maria seems confused by the series of mistakes

What caused this debacle? Khotenashvili allowed herself to fall under one minute by move 18, in harsh words of Alekhine: "The fact that a player is very short of time is to my mind, as little to be considered as an excuse as, for instance, the statement of the law-breaker that he was drunk at the time he committed the crime."

Muminova, Nafisa 0-1 Zhao Xue
The Chinese player must have hypnotized her opponent in this game. On move 16 White had the devastating resource 16.Nxf7! which would have given her an unstoppable attack which would have at least cost black a heavy amount of material. However White didn't play it - the strange thing is that on the very next move Zhao Xue played 16...h6? encouraging the sacrifice... and it still didn't happen! With the retreat of the knight Black eventually seized the initiative and won due to a blunder by White in an already unpleasant position.

Zhao Xue mentioned that she thought she was better after 15...Bd7? which probably means she completely underestimated the sacrifice on f7.

Zhao Xue underestimated her opponent's resources, but luckily for her Muminova, maybe overestimating her opponent's calculating ability, decided not to go for the kill

Pictures by Maria Emelianova

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Schedule

The games start at 11:00h European time, 13:00h Moscow, 5 a.m. New York. You can find your regional starting time 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 12 or any of our Fritz compatible chess programs