Gaziantep: Sebag, Cmilyte, Foisor lead with perfect scores

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.

Round two

Before the start of the second round FIDE Vice President and the President of TCF Ali Nihat Yazici asked for a minute of silence: "The Chairman of the FIDE Qualification Commission, Mikko Markkula, has passed away. He was a good friend of of all of us."

In the second round GM Nadezhda Kosintseva, who had moved up to the first board, unexpectedly lost her game against WGM Sopilko Guramishvili, 140 Elo points below her. She managed to get a position with clear advantage in but few inaccurate moves tip the scales in favor of Georgian player.

Azeri player Gulnar Mammadova, who defeated Nana Dzagnidze in the first round, continued her winning streak – in the second round she won against Eva Repkova. The rating favorite of another game, Elisabeth Pähtz, decided to sacrifice a piece in an equal position, but her opponent Jovana Vojinovic found a defence and won the game.

Defending European champion Viktorija Cmilyte defeating WGM Jolanta Zawadzka

• Full results of round two

Round three

The third round of the European Individual Women Chess Championship left only three players with a 100% score. Defending European champion Viktorija Cmilyte won her game against Jovana Vojinovic, Cristina-Adela Foisor and Marie Sebag were stronger in their games against Tatjana Kosintseva and Natasa Bojkovic. On the first board former world champion Antoaneta Stefanova made a draw with Salome Melia. Hilal Ozturk shows the best result among Turkish players. In the third round she defeated Anastasia Savina, whose rating is 550 points above the Turkish youngster! Another Turkish player, Kubra Ozturk, started to score and gained her first point by winning nice game against Roberta Messina. Muzychuk's sisters got quite dangerous positions today, but both of them managed to secure half a point.

Almira Skripchenko from France before her third round game against Lilit Galojan,
which she won. Almira is now in fourth place with 2.5/3 points.

Sopiko Guramishvili is also at 2.5/3 points, with a 2662 performance

The youngest participant of the event: Sahin Hayrun Nisa from Turkey

Evgenij Miroshnichenko, 33, has been an International Grandmaster since 2002. "Miro", as he likes to be called, is a two times Ukrainian Champion (2003 and 2008) and a winner of numerous international tournaments. In the following notes we find the highlights of round three in Gaziantep. Note that you can select the games in the dropdown box above the Javascript window.

Top standings after three rounds

• Full results with all 103 players here

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

Links Official tournament site Games in PGN: R01, R02, R03, All. The game file is non-standard (e.g. everything in CAPS) and will be cleaned up at the end of the event. 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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