European Women CC is won by Natalia Zhukova

This is all the more pity as the tournament had every reason to  have been covered on its own merits as a competition that would crown not only a winner, but a new European Champion, a title not without a fair amount of prestige.

The early part of the competition was indeed dominated by the surprise lead of Mihaela Sandu from Romania, who scored unexpected wins over some of the top seeds such as Alexandra Goryachkina and Olga Girya. This led to its blackest moment: The Letter.

The author of these lines was covering something else, and barely followed the controversy, just noting that evidence was supposedly lacking. After taking exactly one game at random, the win over Olga Girya in round four, it is quite clear the players signing the letter made no effort whatsoever to examine the case before making the accusations.

Olga Girya was one of the victims... of her own play

Komodo 9 doesn't think too much of the play in the game, from its lofty 3300 perch, and the evaluation was quite equal until move 36, with very little going on. Olga Girya, who is playing white begins to get herself in trouble with imprecise moves, possibly trying to push for more than the position could yield, but Sandu, playing black is also lacking in cybernetic precision, and only gets a minor edge. Even by move 45, when things are beginning to become unpleasant for White, there were resources, but a massive blunder threw the game away and suddenly White was losing a piece. The tactic involved was nothing mind blowing either. See for yourself:

Olga Girya - Mihaela Sandu

A smiling Mihaela Sandu against Lela Javakishvili

Since Sandu's play had been good, and she had enjoyed a fantastic run, it was just that fortunate combination of factors that led to it. Though she lost in round six, the quality of her play was actually quite consistent, and by the end of the tournament, the Romanian finished with 6.0/11 with an excellent 2457 performance, but short of one of the dearly sought qualification spots.

Natalia Zhukova won the title with 9.5/11 and a 2662 performance

The two players who truly ran with the tournament were Nino Batsiashvili from Georgia  and Ukrainian GM Natalia Zhukova. The Georgian player was unstoppable and by round eight had 7.5/8 (letter anyone?), a full point ahead of Zhukova with 6.5/8. The two leaders collided in round ten in a game that was to decide the tournament and the fate of the title.  

Nino Batsiashvili was the true runaway train from the start with 7.5/8

Nino Batsiashvili - Natalia Zhukova

GM Monicka Socko finished with 7.5/11 in seventh place

This sealed the fate of the top two spots, and while bronze was up for grabs, the real battle continued for one of the 14 qualification spots in the Women World Championship. Natlaia Zhukova took gold with 9.5/11, Nino Batsiashvili was silver with 9.0/11 and Alisa Kashlinskaya was third with 8.0/11. Since seven of the top finishers were already qualified for the Women World Championship, the actual quaifiers went down to the 21st place, with Sopiko Guramishvili and Nino Khurtsidze as the last to make it.

Photos by Sopio Nikoladze

Final standings (top 21 qualify)

Click for complete standings

Links Official tournament site All games in PGN You can use ChessBase 13 or any of our Fritz compatible chess programs to replay the games in PGN. You can also download our free Playchess client, which will in addition give you immediate access to the chess server Playchess.com.