British Women's Championship, 14-17 October 2021

 This year's British Championship festival had a number of events other than the main championship, and one of them was the British Women's Championship. This is normally awarded within the British Championship itself, but this year it was a stand-alone event.

The pre-tournament favourites were two former champions, IM Harriet Hunt (who won the title four times between 1995 and 1999) and GM Ketevan Arakhamia-Grant (who won it four times between 2003 and 2007). But they clearly weren't going to have it all their own way, as third seed Katarzyna Toma beat both of them in successive rounds to be the sole leader after round 3.

Had she gone on to convert a winning position against Varney in round 5, Toma would now no doubt be the champion. But a loss on time in that game meant that there were three joint leaders after that point, and whoever of Toma, Varney and Hunt made the most of their two final games would probably win the event. 

And Hunt was the won who rose to the challenge, winning both games on the last day to finish on 5½/7 and win her fifth title. (The 22-year gap between successive titles is a record for this championship.) Toma was second with 5; third place on 4½ was shared by Arakhamia-Grant, Varney and Kueh. (Kueh's performance notably got her live rating up to 2099, just one point short of being able to claim the WFM title.)

 


Title Name Rating Federation 1.Rd 2.Rd 3.Rd 4.Rd 5.Rd 6.Rd 7.Rd Score
1 IM Hunt Harriet V 2414 England 10w1 5b½ 2b0 4w1 3w1 6b1 7w1 5½
2 WGM Toma Katarzyna 2254 England 6w1 4b1 1w1 3b½ 5w0 7b½ 9w1 5
3 Kueh Audrey 2080 England -½ 8b1 5w1 2w½ 1b0 10w1 4b½ 4½
4 GM Arakhamia-Grant   Ketevan E 2376 Scotland 7b1 2w0 11w1 1b0 8w1 5b1 3w½ 4½
5 WCM Varney Zoe 1937 England 11b1 1w½ 3b0 7w1 2b1 4w0 -1 4½
6 Singha Swati 1438 India 2b0 7w0 -1 10b1 11w1 1w0 8b1 4
7 Subramanian   Anusha 1623 England 4w0 6b1 10w1 5b0 9b1 2w½ 1b0 3½
8 Pyun Lindsay 1443 England -½ 3w0 9b½ -1 4b0 11w+ 6w0 3
9 Hariharan   Shambavi 1109 England -½ 10b0 8w½ 11b1 7w0 -1 2b0 3
10 AFM Bridgeman Niamh 1802 England 1b0 9w1 7b0 6w0 -1 3b0 0 2
11 Arora Prachi 1437 India 5w0 -1 4b0 9w0 6b0 8b- 0 1

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Great Players: Ignatz von Kolisch

Image
I first referenced this video in the piece about Alexander Petrov , but it bears another look: You will notice that  Paul Morphy was dominant throughout his entire competitive career, but his reign as world #1 was interrupted briefly by a player called Kolisch, who then almost immediately disappears from the scene. So this piqued my interest: who was this mysterious Kolisch, and why is his name so much less familiar than those of his contemporaries? Well, the answer, on looking at his  Wikipedia article , seems to be that he just had a very short playing career, and did not play much against the big names of his day. This is backed up by his chessgames page , which shows nearly all his games coming in the years 1857-1867. This did, however, include two triumphs in international tournaments. One was the relatively weak Cambridge 1860 event, but the other was the rather stronger  Paris 1867 event, which would also star future world champion Steinitz. This tournament ef...
Read more

West is Best at the 4NCL, Rounds 1-2, 22-23 October 2022

 The 4NCL , Britain's only professional chess league, has, like many chess events, been disrupted by the ongoing pandemic. The 2019-20 season was aborted six rounds in; there was no 2020-21 season, and the 2021-22 season was an experimental format for that season only: a Swiss system (chosen so that if it needed to terminate early, the final finishing positions would still be reasonable ones). The twelve teams who finished at the top of the Swiss that year would be in Division 1 in the new 2022-23 season, and my team, West Is Best, were one of the lucky twelve. This was naturally always going to be a tricky season to negotiate, and the way the draw was done meant we could expect a rocky start: the top six finishers of the previous season were paired to face the teams finishing 7th-12th in the first six rounds of the season, thus maximizing the chances of exciting promotion and relegation clashes occurring towards the end. Thus, arriving at the Daventry Court Hotel on the Saturday,...
Read more

4NCL Congress, 9-11 July 2021

 So it turns out congress chess has started to make a return, in the shape of the long-running series of 4NCL Congresses . The 25th such event was held in Leamington Spa over the past weekend, and attracted a total entry of 130 entrants across 3 sections. Among the entrants were three grandmasters, Nigel Davies, Keith Arkell and Peter Wells, but none of those players actually won the Open section. First place was instead shared by two strong young players, FM Jonah Willow (19) and CM Aaravamudhan Balaji (16), with 4½/5. Balaji's performance was especially impressive, including a win against Wells and a draw against Arkell on his way to a rating gain of 67.2 points. Arkell finished third on 4 points. I've annotated three of the games; thank you to Jonathan Tait for giving help on how to display them.
Read more