 Xu Yuhua became the new World Women's Champion when he downed six opponents at Ekaterinburg in Russia on March 25. She is the third Chinese to win the title after Xie Jun and Zhu Chen. In the finals, Xu Yuhua humbled Alisa Galliamova of Kazan, Russia 2.5-0.5 to take her maiden title with a game to spare in the best of four finals.
Xu, 29, learnt the moves from her father at the age of six. She hails from Hangzhou City in China. She surprised the world in 2000 and 2002 by winning the World Cup tournaments held at Shenyang and Hyderabad. She keeps cool and does not get excited in knock out competitions and is tailor made for success in it. If you look at her results below, she played just one tie-break while beating six opponents for her title.
Xu beat Xuan Thanh Khiet Hoang (Vie) 1.5-0.5, Anna Ushenina (Ukr) 1.5-0.5, Tatiana Kosintseva (Rus) 1.5-0.5, Ekaterina Kovalevskaya (Rus) 2.5-1.5, Svetlana Matveeva (Rus) 1.5-0.5, Alisa Galliamova (Rus) 2.5-0.5. One might notice that Xu's last four victories were against Russians. Her 2502 Elo rating is for real and she earned it the hard way mainly from women's competitions.
India's hopes vanished in rounds one, two and three. Best hope, Koneru Humpy lost 1-3 to the French girl Sebag Marie in the tie-break of the second round. Earlier, Meenakshi Subbaraman had bowed 0-2 to higher ranked Tatiana Kosintseva of Russia in the very first round. Vijayalakshmi, the 1979 born old war horse of Indian chess lasted the longest and exited in round three. Indian performance can be counted as disappointing.
In the first round, highest rated Humpy blanked Tuduesto Sabure of Botswana 2-0 and then lost to Marie in the tie-break. Tenth seed Vijayalakshmi beat Irina Berezina (Aus) 1.5-0.5, and came from behind to down Lela Javakhishvili (Geo) 3-1. In the third round, Vijayalakshmi played weakly with black to lose 0.5-1.5 to the old hand, Svetlana Matveeva of Russia.
Overall, the event had Antoaneta Stefanova of Bulgaria as the defending champion. She had won the title in Elista in June 2004. Iweta Radziewicz of Poland shocked her 3-1 in the second round itself. Top three seeds, Stefanova, Humpy, Cramling were defeated in the second round itself. Other bigger upsets on that round were defeats of Natalia Zhukova (Serbia), Irina Krush (USA) and Nana Dzagnidze (Geo). This edition, also held in Russia had 64 players for a straight knock out.
Results (finals): Alisa Galliamova (Rus) lost to Xu Yuhua (Chn) 0.5-2.5. Semifinals: Viktoria Cmilyte (Lat) lost to Galliamova 0.5-1.5, Svetlana Matveeva (Rus) lost to Xu Yuhua 0.5-1.5.
Quarter-finals: Galliamova (Rus) bt Nino Khurtzidze (Geo) 2-0, Svetlana Matveeva (Rus) bt Sebag Marie (Fra) 1.5-0.5, Ekaterina Kovalevskaya (Rus) lost to Xu Yuhua (Chn) 1.5-2.5, Maya Chiburdanidze (Geo) lost to Viktoria Cmilyte (Ltu) 1.5-2.5.
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