Women's World Championship

Top seeds dominate in Elista

The women's world championship finally found a home and now the players can concentrate on chess. Not that it's easy to concentrate under the new FIDE time control or when you have to play rapid and blitz playoff games on the same day as the main game. Stress management becomes easily as important as good moves under these conditions, but the fact remains that almost all of the top-rated players smoothly moved into the second round. (Well, we're not sure smoothly is the right word in every case, especially since some of the gamescores are clearly not correct, even for blitz.)

We couldn't count 64, can you?

The top seed in Elista is India's Humpy Koneru. Still young at 17 she hasn't made much of a move since coming out as the next big thing three years ago. She's playing a lot, but many of her games are like those in the 2003 Indian women's event, which she predictably dominated. This is her first world championship and so far she's playing like the favorite, winning three games straight and needing only a draw tomorrow to advance to the third round.

Humpy is also clearly the Asian flag-carrier now that the impressive Chinese delegation was decimated in the first round. Former title holder Xie Jun and current champion Zhu Chen aren't there, but China still arrived with seven players. (As did Georgia. Russia had nine!) Only three of the Chinese players made it to the second round. The western hemisphere was cruelly treated in the first round. Only Irina Krush of the USA survived to carry the flag for the Americas.

The other favorites are a mix of well-known veterans like Galliamova and legend Maia Chiburdanidze and other representatives of the youth movement like Kateryna Lahno of Ukraine and Germany's Elisabeth Paehtz. Lahno appeared on the scene so quickly that to participate she had to be specially nominated by FIDE president Ilyumzhinov when Georgian star Ioseliani withdrew.

The time control is the new "FIDE control" despised by most players. It's ninety minutes to start plus thirty seconds per move, with no additional controls. ("Two hours of thinking and two hours of time trouble" according to one wit.) If the match is tied after the second game, they players take a short break and then (on the same day) play two games of rapid chess (25' + 10"). If they are still even it's two games of blitz (5' + 10" according to the rules, a long increment for a blitz game).

If it's still tied up they play a sudden death game. Lots are drawn and the winner chooses color. White gets six minutes, black five, no increment. The loser is eliminated and if the game is drawn Black moves on. We saw four of these "armageddon" games in the first round. Ah chess, RIP.

It's a long way to travel for the 32 players who head home after just two days in Kalmykia. The first-round losers (call it an appearance fee) still get three thousand dollars, more if they lose on tiebreaks. The winner, the new women's world champion, will take home $48,000, double the prize of the second-place finisher. Here are the results of today's games, the first of the second round.

Good chess is always hard to find with these time controls, but there are always plenty of blunders and tactics. (We aren't chauvinist; the same goes for the European Championship currently underway with the same control.)