World domination pursued by Asian women at title eventby Adam Richards
26th Dec 10
More evidence that Asia is taking the balance of power from Eastern Europe in the game of chess has been seen at the Women’s World Chess Championship.
This year’s World Championship started earlier in December in southern Turkey, with 24 of the 64 competitors coming from Eastern Europe. However, by the time the championships reached the quarter finals stage, just one Eastern European, Kateryna Lahno from Ukraine, remained in the competition.
China saw four of its competitors reach the quarter finals, whilst the last quarterfinalist was a French player – Almira Skripchenko – although she originally came from Moldova.
Skripchenko and Lahno were then eliminated at the quarterfinals stage , with the semifinalists being three Chinese competitors and one Indian – Humpy Koneru.
Koneru was the highest-ranked competitor in the semifinals, but suffered a defeat by Hou Yifan, who is only 16 years-of-age from China, but already ranked in the number three position in the world.
This is the second time that Koneru has lost to Hou. She was also beaten by the Chinese player in the 2008 World Championship’s semifinals.
In the final, Hou came up against Ruan Lufei. Ruan’s excellent results in the tournament came as a surprise. Ruan was the number four ranked Chinese player and currently studying at Carnegie Mellon University in their doctoral program.
Ruan’s tournament results is a sign of just how strong chess is in China at the moment.
The final was won by Hou in the second game when Ruan made some poor moves.
Source: http://www.discountvouchers.co.uk
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