Grandmaster Koneru Humpy, after three exhaustive rounds, is relaxed and prepared before her quarter-final match against World Cup champion Xu Yuhua of China in the World women's chess championship in Elista (Kalmykia), Russia, on Saturday.
After six gruelling days of nerve-wrecking chess that witnessed the ouster of 56 players from 64 in the fray in the first three rounds, the players eventually got the first of the two rest days in the championship on Friday.
But none appeared interested in taking an excursion tour of the city as was arranged by the organisers.
Last night, Humpy struck back with vengeance after losing the second game of the tie-breaker against Tatiana Kosintseva of Russia and won both the rapid games to seal her quarter-final berth.
The Indian confessed this morning that she was "shaken but not stirred" by the forgettable loss that forced her into the tie-break and gave a rude wake-up call.
So far, so good, but now comes the big battle for Humpy against Xu Yuhua, who beat her in the semi-finals of the 2002 World Cup at Hyderabad and went on to win that title.
Chinese supremacy in chess is well established and so far in the new millennium they have had two World champions in Xie Jun and Zhu Chen.
However, this time both the players opted out owing to personal reasons while six others have been ousted so far.
In fact, Humpy and Yuhua are the only two Asians left in the competition.
The other quarter-finals line-up is quite interesting: Viktorija Cmilyte of Lithuania and Antoaneta Stefanova of Bulgaria, who both won the blitz tie-break games against 2003 European Women champion Pia Cramling of Sweden and Natslia Zhukova of Ukraine respectively.
These two will lock horns with two strong Georgians, former world women champion Maia Chiburdanidze and Nana Dzagnidze. The other match will be played between Russian Ekaterina Kovalevskaya and Georgian turned German Ketino Kachiani-G.
If Humpy is able to win the next round, she will get a relatively easier opposition in the semis as the winner between Kovalevskaya and Kachiani will earn the right to play her.
The event thus far has seen many fallen stars and topping the list is high profile trio of Russian Alexandra Kosteniuk, who was ousted in the second round, Ukrainian 14-year-old Kateryna Lahno and German Elisabeth Paehtz, who were both shown the exit door in the third round.
There are two games in each round in the championship except the final, which is a four-game affair. The winner takes home US $ 60,000 out of a total prize pool of US $ 450,000.
Quarter-final pairings:
Koneru Humpy (Ind) v/s Xu Yuhua (Chn)
Antoaneta Stefanova (Bul) v/s Nana Dzagnidze (Geo)
Maia Chiburdanidze (Geo) v/s Viktorija Cmilyte (Ltu)
Ekaterina Kovalevskaya (Rus) v/s Ketino Kachiani-G. (Ger).
Late last night, Humpy came back to reckoning after defeating Tatiana Kosintseva of Russia in both the games of the third round tie-break.
Having the lost the second game under normal time control, Humpy had blown away her full point lead but with a double victory again under Rapid chess rules, the strongest ever Indian woman player proved that she is made of sterner stuff.
It was a contest of nerves as Humpy survived some anxious moments in the second game. It was an irregular queen pawn game yet again as white that gave Humpy, what looked like an easy victory in the end.
In the middle game, Humpy had to sacrifice a pawn to get her own queen side pawn rolling. Kosintseva fell for the bait when she went for a dubious trade of pieces that left her pieces scattered. Humpy won after picking a piece in a tactical skirmish.
Earlier in the first game of the tie-break, the Russian was yet again taken to task in the Modern defence where in Humpy obtained a comfortable position in the middle game. The pieces got exchanged as if in a heap and in the end a queen and Bishop endgame arose that was drawn with correct play from both sides.
However, Kosintseva had to pay heavy price for her over-ambitious play in the ending and she was eventually caught in little tactical coup that cost a piece. Dejected, the Russian resigned.
Meanwhile, in other games of the tiebreak star performer Kateryna Lahno of Ukraine bowed out after losing the second game of the tiebreak against Russian Ekaterina Kovalevskaya while Antoaneta Stefanova of Bulgaria and Viktorija Cmilyte of Lithuania could only manage level scores against Natalia Zhukova of Ukraine and Pia Cramling of Sweden respectively to set up a blitz game clash later.
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