WGP Geneva: Khotenashvili leads alone

Neva Women's Grand Prix in Geneva

The Neva Foundation in partnership with the Internation Chess Federation (FIDE) has organised the first leg of the official Women's Grand Prix series for the first time in Geneva. From May 3 to May 15, twelve of the best women players featuring current Women World Champion Anna Ushenina from Ukraine, will confront each other at the N'vY Manotel. The tournament is an eleven-round all-play-all at classical time controls.

Round ten report

Georgian IM (and soon GM to be) Bela Khotenashvili confidently won her game against Katerina Lagno and is now half a point above Anna Muzychuk, who made a draw against Viktorija Cmilyte. Tatiana Kosintseva drew against Anna Ushenina and remains on the third place before the last round. Nana Dzagnidze defeated Ju Wenjun and shares the fourth place with Anna Ushenina, one point behind of Tatiana Kosintseva. Olga Girya and Tuvshintugs Batchimeg made a relatively quick draw while Alexandra Kosteniuk and Hou Yifan played for six hours to finish their game in a draw too.

Nana Dzagnidze (above) didn’t expect her opponent to choose the Dutch Defence and had prepared mainly for the Kings Indian. However, Ju Wenjun, who won with the Dutch against Anna Ushenina a few rounds ago, chose to play this opening again and got quite a comfortable position with black.

It was not the type of position which Nana enjoys playing, but when Ju Wenjun (above) played 21...b5 and let White’s pieces have more space for maneuvers, the Georgian player found good counterplay and later on managed to transfer the game into a winning endgame with opposite color bishops.

The longest and most complicated game of the round was between two former world champions. After the opening Alexandra Kosteniuk (above right) could not find the right plan and “was choosing strange moves”, as she pointed out during the press conference. She lost a pawn but was hoping to get some counter chances due to the pair of bishops. Chinese GM Hou Yifan missed some opportunities to get huge advantage and later on the players ended up in a very complicated endgame with unbalanced material (two bishops, knight and four pawns against rook, bishop and six pawns). After 95 moves the signed a peace agreement.

Analysis by Adrian Mikhalchishin

The famous chess trainer, who coached a number of participants of the Geneva Grand Prix from their pre-teen years, provides live commentary during the games.

Down to 50%: one of the favourites Kateryna Lahno

A new grandmaster: Bela Khotenashvili, with a 2703 performance in Geneva

Full summaries of other games here

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A full summary of all games is to be found here on the official tournament site.

Current standings

Information and photos supplied by FIDE Press Officer Anastasiya Karlovich

Schedule and results

Links Official tournament site 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 12 or any of our Fritz compatible chess programs.