Koneru Humpy effortlessly defeated Denise Frick of South Africa while D. Harika defeated compatriot Soumya Swaminathan to move into the second round of the world women’s chess championship.
After sweating it out in the first game of the first round, Humpy was in terrific form in the return game, registering a convincing win to ease through to the round-of-32 in the knockout championship.
Humpy faced the Slav defence and stuck to the basics in the opening to get a tangible advantage.
Denise blunders
As the Indian girl posted her knight in the centre, Denise blundered a couple of pawns and was never in the game. Humpy sealed the issue in just 26 moves.
Harika made use of her white pieces to good effect against Soumya in an English opening game. After attaining a playable position in the middle game, Soumya went wrong with an erroneous plan and handed Harika the initiative.
By simply improving her position, Harika caused some damage to black and Soumya ran short of time before making the decisive error. The game lasted 33 moves.
Easy for Yifan
In another game, world champion Yifan Hou of China scored an easy win over Sachini Ranasinghe of Sri Lanka.
The Lankan girl missed her flight and reached here at the last minute, thanks to some deft planning, but her game against Yifan turned out to be one-sided and she was on her return flight soon!
The results (first round, involving Indians):
Koneru Humpy bt Denise Frick (RSA) 2-0.
D. Harika bt Soumya Swaminathan 1.5-0.5.
