Tbilisi: Muzychuk falters, Cramling and Lahno take the lead

The ACP Womens Cup Rapid is taking place in Tbilisi, Georgia, from February 17th to 21st February, 2012. Top seeds are Anna Muzychuk (2580), Kateryna Lahno (2557) and Nadezhda (2537) and Tatiana Kosintseva (2513), Nana Dzagnidze (2535) and former women's world champion Maia Chiburdanidze (2500). The event is a twelve player all-play-all. The official website and Playchess are providing live broadcast of the games, the former has in addition streaming video, interviews and live commentary by Mark Dvoretsky.

The event carries a prize fund of US $40,000, of which $10,000 goes to the winner. It is sponsored by SOCAR Energy Georgia, and organised by the Association of Chess Professionals (ACP) and the Georgian Chess Federation.

Tbilisi: A view of the city and the Mtkvari River

A bronze monument to Vakhtang Gorgasali, a Georgian king, founder of Tbilisi.
He is proudly sitting on his horse and saluting the capital of Georgia.

The Presidential Palace at night. The cost of building this palace was 13 million Georgian Lari
(= US $8 million), which according to President Saakashvili is about 0.18% of the entire state expenditures.

Report after day three

This time the victim of our jinxed reporting is Anna Muzychuk, who was sailing along nicely at the top of the table, with 4.5/5 points and a 2861 performance, as we duly reported after round five. In the next three rounds on Monday the Slovenian GM scored just one draw and moved to place four on the table, a full point behind the leaders. Can you forgive us, Anna? Was it the baby photo that caused the crash?

The two new leaders, who each scored 2.0/3 on day three of the Women's Rapid, were GM Pia Cramling of Sweden and Ukrainian GM Kateryna Lahno.

Pia Cramling in action: the Swedish GM is now leading in Tbilisi

Pia is something of a chess legend, having been one of the strongest female players in the world since the early 1980s and regularly plays on the Swedish (Men's) team at Olympiads. She is married to the Spanish grandmaster Juan Manuel Bellon Lopez, and has lived in Spain for a number of years.

Kateryna Lahno is married to GM Robert Fontaine and now lives in mainly in Paris

Results

Here's a nice win by IM Anna Zatonskih with black over a former world champion

Standings after eight rounds

Photos by Anastasiya Karlovich for the official web site

Nana Alexendria interviews Pia Cramling after round eight

Remaining schedule

Links Official tournament site (with live video stream and video reports) All games in PGN 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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