12/3/2019 – Alexandra Kosteniuk won the women's European Rapid Chess Championship on tiebreak score ahead of Olga Girya after both finished with 9/11. Five players ended up a full point behind, with former women's world champion Antoaneta Stefanova getting third place. | Photos: European Chess Union
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Kosteniuk and Girya finish ahead
Monaco is currently the centre of women's chess. The second Grand Prix tournament for women in the 2019-20 series is getting underway. The European women's elite had a chance to warm up with the European Rapid and Blitz Championship, which attracted about 100 players to the Mediterranean enclave.
Anna and Mariya Muzychuk and Alexandra Kosteniuk topped the starting list, but a prominent participant was right behind them: Former World Champion Maia Chiburdanidze is ranked number four at 2475.
Maia Chiburdanidze in 1984 | Photo: ECU
The new Women's European Rapid Champion, however, is Alexandra Kosteniuk. The Russian grandmaster and former world champion scored 9 points at the 11-round Swiss, and prevailed over Olga Girya, who collected the same amount of points but had a worse tiebreak score. In the penultimate round, Kosteniuk defeated Girya in their direct encounter. In the last round, Kosteniuk drew Elisabeth Paehtz, who had arrived as defending champion and ended up sharing 3rd to 8th places on eight points.
After the first day of action, Latvian Laura Rogule surprisingly led the field. Rogule won all her first six encounters of the tournament, but completely lost the thread on the second day. Anna and Mariya Muzychuk arrived as rating favourites with Kosteinuk, but the Ukrainian sisters could not quite live up to their ratings and finished with 7 and 7½ points respectively.
Former women's world champions and role models to many generations to come Nona Gaprindashvili and Maia Chiburdanidze participated in the competition. Chiburdanize scored 6½ points (26th place) after a long break from tournament play, while Nona Gaprindashvili scored 6 points and finished 34th. Their direct duel ended in favour of Chiburdanidze.
The European Women's Blitz Championship was a 13-round Swiss tournament played on November 29th, 2019. The time control was 3 minutes for the entire game, plus 2-seconds per move starting from move one.
Here Kosteniuk finished in sole first place with 10/13 points, half point ahead of five of her peers.
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After 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Qxd4 Nc6 5.Bb5 Bd7 6.Qd3, White sidesteps mainline theory and steers the game into less explored, strategically rich positions.
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