Tenth European Women's Championship in Saint Petersburg

10th European Individual Women's Chess 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, just a stone's throw away from where top GM Peter Svidler lives (factoid).

The players are in two differents 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.

The athmosphere is good, pretty relaxed, but very concentrated! After five rounds four players are leading with 4.5/5 points. Eleven players are just behind the pair, with 4.0/4 points. Kosintseva Tatiana looked in better shape in Aeroflot than here. Her sister Nadezhda declined to play before the tournament.

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

• Full table with 168 players available here

Some impressions from the tournament

The following pictures are from round five. Since the names of the players are clearly visible on the name cards, no captions are provided – except in once case where the name card tipped over. And one where the contestant is remarkably young.

Ten-year-old Aleksandra Goryachkina already sports a rating of over 2000 Elo

IM Tatiana Kosintseva from Russia

Video reports by Europe Echecs

All pictures on this page and the video reports are by GM Robert Fontaine and the Europe Echecs team. The videos 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 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.