Alexandra Kosteniuk triumphs in Women’s World Cup
by Carlos Alberto Colodro
8/2/2021 – A draw with white was enough for Alexandra Kosteniuk to claim victory at the first edition of the Women’s World Cup in Sochi. Aleksandra Goryachkina could not create imbalances in her must-win game and ended up agreeing to a draw in a lost position. In the match for third place, Tan Zhongyi and Anna Muzychuk drew again and will decide their match in tiebreaks. Meanwhile, in the open section, Sergey Karjakin moved on to the final, where he will face either Magnus Carlsen or Jan-Krzysztof Duda, who will return to the playing hall on Tuesday to face off in rapid and blitz tiebreakers. | Photo: Anastasiia Korolkova
A fantastic performance
Alexandra Kosteniuk’s showing at the first edition of the Women’s World Cup was nothing short of dazzling. A fixture in the elite women’s circuit for over 20 years, the Russian won the knockout event without ever needing to play a single rapid tiebreaker. In fact, she scored 10/12 points on her way to a memorable triumph — knocking out Deysi Cori, Pia Cramling, Mariya Muzychuk, Valentina Gunina and Tan Zhongyi before defeating top seed Aleksandra Goryachkina in the final.
After 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 g6! leads to the so-called "Accelerated Dragon Defense". On this DVD the Russian grandmaster and top women player Nadezhda Kosintseva reveals the secrets of her favourite opening.
Twenty years ago, a 17-year-old Kosteniuk reached the final of the 2001 Women’s World Chess Championship — a 64-player knockout event — where she lost to Zhu Chen in a drawless 8-game match. Seven years later, in 2008, she defeated Chinese prodigy Hou Yifan in the final of a similar event to become the women’s world champion, a title she kept until 2010. Now, at 37, she defeated the latest challenger to the world crown to get a spot in the Candidates Tournament, where she will fight against 7 highly motivated opponents to get the right to challenge Ju Wenjun in a match for the Women’s World Championship.
Kosteniuk’s stellar performance gained her a stunning 42.8 rating points, which prompted her to climb 10 spots in the women’s world ranking. Simply an extraordinary achievement!
The woman of the hour — Alexandra Kosteniuk | Photo: Eric Rosen
Twice was the tournament’s champion in real danger of losing throughout the event — in her game with white against Gunina, and in Sunday’s first encounter of the final against Goryachkina. Remarkably, she came back from behind to score full points on both occasions!
Only needing a draw with white on Monday, the experienced grandmaster kept things under control against her younger compatriot. In desperate need of a win, Goryachkina tried to keep the game going in an opposite-coloured bishop endgame, only to soon find herself in a lost position:
Kosteniuk vs. Goryachkina - Game 2
As endgame specialist Karsten Müller points out in his annotations below, entering a race with 42...Bc7 is too risky for Black, while 42...Bxh2 would have led to a draw. Of course, Goryachkina had no option and looked for a last chance to provoke a mistake by her opponent.
Not long after, White had a completely winning position, but the compatriots nonetheless sensibly agreed to a draw, which meant Kosteniuk had won the demanding event that started exactly three weeks ago.
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