The Hindu : Sport / Chess : Humpy hits back

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Humpy hits back

NEW DELHI: As expected, second seed K. Humpy hit back strongly with white pieces to down Chinese teenager Hou Yifan in the second game of their Women’s world chess championship clash at Nalchik, Russia, on Thursday.

Humpy, needing a victory to force the tiebreak games on Friday, dominated this English Symmetrical game against a somewhat passive Hou Yifan and levelled the match at 1-1 with a 36-move victory.

A queenside initiative from an understandably aggressive Humpy set up the victory that came when her rival saw no plan to prevent a checkmate.

In the other semifinal, Russia’s Aleksandra Kosteniuk completed a 1.5-0-5 victory over veteran Swede Pia Cramling after drawing the second game in 40 moves.

Meanwhile, in the eighth round of the Grand Slam Finals at Bilbao, in Spain, Viswanathan Anand crashed to a rare loss with white pieces against Levon Aronian and remained tied fifth in the six-player field.

Just when the Scotch game appeared to be heading for a draw, Aronian craftily gave up his rook and brought his queen back on the board. Thereafter, with the help of a queen and a rook, the Armenian managed to pull out Anand’s king from the safety net of two rooks and two pawns to win in 75 moves. The victory placed Aronian in the second spot with 12 points.

Earlier, on what turned out to be a decisive day on all three boards, Bulgarian Veselin Topalov defeated Norwegian teenager Magnus Carlsen for the second time in the competition to regain the lead with two rounds to go. Topalov won in 48 moves of Sicilian Dragon to reach 13 points.

Ivanchuk moved to the joint third place with a 49-move victory over Teimour Radjabov. Two more rounds remain following a day of rest.

The results (eighth round): Viswanathan Anand (6) lost to Levon Aronian (Arm, 12); Veselin Topalov (Bul, 13) bt Magnus Carlsen (Nor, 11); Vassily Ivanchuk (Ukr, 11) bt Teimour Radjabov (Aze, 6).

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