The competition for the World Championship between the defending champion Ju Wenjun and her challenger Aleksandra Goryachkina has been exciting and evenly matched. The players have traded blows: Ju Wenjun scored first, but then lost the lead and even fell behind. She faced down a difficult psychological situation with aplomb, first equalizing the match and today, reclaiming the lead with a win in the tenth game.
The World Champion is now back in the lead and Goryachkina has just two chances to balance the score. However, she will have black in the eleventh game.
The theoretical terrain of today's game was once again the Queen's Gambit Declined, exchange variation with which, the challenger obtained a convincing victory in the eighth game.
Click or tap any result to open directly via Live.ChessBase.com
Today Ju Wenjun deviated from her approach in the eighth game and chose the Vaganian variation. In this line, Black allows her structure on the kingside to be weakened, but tries to maintain a defensible position. In fact, the players followed a game between Surya Ganguly and Erwin l'Ami that was played just yesterday in the Challengers group in Wijk aan Zee!
After the bishop has retreated to g6, white exchanges on f6 crippling the black pawns.
The style of play was dealt a major setback four years ago when Magnus Carlsen defeated Vladimir Kramnik with a new concept.
Kramnik played here 12...♞b6 and was worse after 13.♘g3 ♝b4+ 14.♔d1 ♞a4 15.♘gf5.
In the meantime, black's handling has improved with 12...f5, as played by Ju. After a few moves, a position emerged with a very unusual pawn structure.
This set the stage for the critical endgame phase. After the 25th move the following situation arose:
Black played 25...♜a8, followed by 26.b5 c5.
Goryachkina starts 1.d4
As in the prior games, the two players fought intensely even in an endgame with limited material on the board, ultimately leading to the following crucial position.
Black is better, but it is not clear whether this is enough to win the game. Only after 52...♜a3+ did White play 53.♔b4? and started down the wrong path:
53...♜b3+ 54.♔a4 ♚e4 55.♖h8 ♜b7 56.♖c8 ♚d3 57.h5 c3 58.h6 c2 59.♔a3 ♚d2 60.♖d8+ ♚xe3 61.♖c8 ♚d2 62.♖d8+ ♚c1 0-1
Instead, 53.♔b2 ♜b3+ (53...♜xe3 54.♖xf5+ ♚e4 55.♖xf6 ♜h3 =) 54.♔c2 ♚e4 55.♖h7 ♚xe3 56.♖c7 ♚d4 57.♖d7+ offered White a better chance.
Translation from German: Macauley Peterson
