EU Women's Championship: Hoang Thanh Trang leads

10th European Individual Women's Championship,
Saint Petersburg 2009

The 10th European Individual Women's Chess Championship is taking place from March 7 – 21, 2009, in Saint Petersburg, Russia. The venue is the Park Inn Pulkovskaya Hotel (Pobedy or Victory Square 1) in a huge Soviet style playing hall. The players are in two different rooms, downstairs the top 20 boards, with their games broadcast live on the Internet (thanks to Evgeny Tkachiev), and upstairs the rest of the players. The rate of play is 90 minutes for 40 moves, then 30 minutes for the rest of the game with an increment of 30 seconds per move from move number one. The prize fund is 87,500 Euros, with € 10,000 going to the winner, € 7500 for second place, € 6000 € for third, etc., with € 1000 going to the twentieth place.

Report after round seven

After seven rounds the sole leader with 6.0/7 points is GM Hoang Thanh Trang, originally of Vietnamese extraction, now living in and playing for Hungary. Lilit Mrktchian, who was leading after six rounds, lost her game to Hoang in round seven and joined eleven other players in second place.

Top standings after seven rounds (3.0/5 and higher)

• Full table with 168 players available here

Player portraits by Irina Sudakova

The following pictures were kindly provided by WGM Irina Sudakova, who is working in the press center of the European Women's Championship in Saint Petersburg. We have sorted them according to the standings after round seven. Under each picture you see the standings, the player (with FIDE title), nationality, rating, points and performance.

Video reports by Europe Echecs

The video reports are by GM Robert Fontaine and the Europe Echecs team. They give us a unique view of the tournament, with daily wrap-ups and atmosphere reports. Robert is reporting, while his wife Kateryna Lahno is playing in the tournament.

Links Official tournament site All available games in zipped PGN (collated by TWIC) 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 the free PGN reader ChessBase Light, which gives you immediate access. You can also use the program to read, replay and analyse the PGN games.