Humpy pulls it off – wins Doha GM and qualifies

The FIDE Women Grand Prix is a series of elite tournaments organised by FIDE and Global Chess, with six legs over two years in various countries around the world, with three tournaments every year. The winner of each tournament gets 6,500 Euros out of a prize fund of 40,000 Euros, and the overall winner of the series will win a further 15,000 Euros at the end of the series. The sixth event of the cycle was held from the 21st of February to 5th of March. It took place in the Sharq Village and Spa in Doha, Qatar.

Results of round eleven (final)

A critical game in the final round: Humpy beat Zhu Chen, whose...

The all-Georgian game Chiburdanidze vs Dzagnidze ended in a relative quick draw.
It would not have made a difference if the latter had won (see our calculations below)

Batkhuyag Munguntuul put an end to Nana Dzagnidze chances at a world championship challenge...

Standings after eleven rounds (final)

The columns on the right of this table, automatically generated by ChessBase 11, indicate the score, the tiebreak points, the performance and the number of points the player is gaining on the FIDE rating list.

Statistics Of the 66 games played in this event: White won 26 games = 39.4% Black won 19 games = 28.8% 21 games were drawn = 31.8%

Grand Prix standings (before Doha)

We are still working out the exact scores of the Grand Prix. As simple rocket scientists we consulted an expert: WGM Zsuzsa Veroci, who explained it to us while the final round was still under way and final results not yet in. "If Koneru wins," Zsuzsa told us, she will play the world championship match against Hou Yifan, but in case Sebag wins, then Dzagnidze is the challenger!" Not quite easy, ist it? Our WGM friend went on to explain: "The participants get 120 + 40 bonus points for first place, 110 + 20 for second, and 100 + 10 for third. Koneru had a very bad start in the Nalchik Grand Prix. Then she tied the first place wit Danielian, and it was 145 points. All together she will have 398.5 points, 8.5 points more then Dzagndze. If she ties for first place with Danielian and Sebag, it is only 133.3 points, and she only has a total of 386.6 points, which is 3.4 points less then Dzagndze, who is then the challenger!" We are going to stick to rocket science. A full description of the qualification will follow shortly here.

All photos by Maria Bolshakova and Anastasiya Karlovich

Links Official tournament site All games in PGN All games are being broadcast on the official site and on Playchess. To read, replay and analyse the PGN games we adivse you to download the free PGN reader ChessBase Light. This program also gives you immediate access to the chess server Playchess.com.