European Women's Championship: three players on top

10th European Individual Women's Championship,
Saint Petersburg 2009

The 10th European Individual Women's Chess Championship is taking place from March 7 – 21, 2009, in Saint Petersburg, Russia. The venue is the Park Inn Pulkovskaya Hotel (Pobedy or Victory Square 1) in a huge Soviet style playing hall. The players are in two different rooms, downstairs the top 20 boards, with their games broadcast live on the Internet (thanks to Evgeny Tkachiev), and upstairs the rest of the players. The rate of play is 90 minutes for 40 moves, then 30 minutes for the rest of the game with an increment of 30 seconds per move from move number one. The prize fund is 87,500 Euros, with € 10,000 going to the winner, € 7500 for second place, € 6000 € for third, etc., with € 1000 going to the twentieth place.

Report after round eight

Hungarian GM Hoang Thanh Trang was in the sole lead after seven rounds, but an eighth round draw against Natalija Pogonina allowed two other players to join her at the top of the table. IM Salome Melia defeated WGM Tatiana Grabuzova, and IM Iweta Rajlich beat IM Nino Khurtsidze, so that now three players share the same score of 6.5/8 points. Iweta, who is the wife of Rybka programmer IM Vasik Rajlich, achieved this on her birthday on Monday.

Top standings after eight rounds (5.0/8 and higher)

• Full table with 168 players available here

Player portraits by Elena Mikheeva

The following pictures were kindly provided by Elena Mikheeva, who is the wife of tournament director Vladimir Bykov and a very good friend of our previous photo reporter, WGM Irina Sudakova. Both are working in the press center of the European Women's Championship in Saint Petersburg. We have sorted the pictures according to the standings after round eight. Under each picture you see the standings, the player (with FIDE title), nationality, rating, points and performance.

1	IM Melia, Salome	6.5	GEO	2422	2606

2	GM Hoang Thanh Trang	6.5	HUN	2483	2634

3	IM Rajlich, Iweta	6.5	POL	2399	2595

7	IM Foisor, Cristina-Adela	6.0	ROU	2412	2550

8	WGM Shadrina, Tatiana	6.0	RUS	2416	2561

16	GM Lahno, Kateryna	5.5	UKR	2488	2490

19	WGM Demina, Julia	5.5	RUS	2361	2432

22	IM Arakhamia-Grant, Ketevan	5.5	SCO	2500	2484

23	IM Muzychuk, Anna	5.5	SLO	2540	2448

28	IM Muzychuk, Mariya	5.5	UKR	2427	2421

33	IM Paehtz, Elisabeth	5.0	GER	2455	2404

97	WFM Styazhkina, Anna	4.0	RUS	1926	2154

96	WFM Yakovich, Yuliya	4.0	RUS	2125	2170

107	WIM Kirillova, Varvara	3.5	RUS	2246	2228

115	WFM Korchagina, Viktoria	3.5	RUS	2187	2085

The start of a round at the European Women's Championship

The playing venue with round eight under way

Arbiters Ruslana Mochalova and Elizabeth Polihroniade

Video reports by Europe Echecs

The video reports are by GM Robert Fontaine and the Europe Echecs team. They give us a unique view of the tournament, with daily wrap-ups and atmosphere reports. Robert is reporting, while his wife Kateryna Lahno is playing in the tournament.

Links Official tournament site All available games in zipped PGN (collated by TWIC) 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 the free PGN reader ChessBase Light, which gives you immediate access. You can also use the program to read, replay and analyse the PGN games.