Women's World Championship match

[LawrenceCooper]

After white's 25th move the advantage appears to have passed to black.

[Tim Harding]

After white's 25th move the advantage appears to have passed to black.

Agreed and Muzychuk is now behind on the clock.

Hou Yifan just exchanged queens. White's N looks silly and her pawn structure is worse. Probably she should have played that f5-f6 idea when she could.

[JustinHorton]

Well that turned out pretty horrid.

[Tim Harding]

Well that turned out pretty horrid.

Indeed. Muzychuk seemed to lose her way completely when her preparation ran out.
I expect this will prove to be the decisive game of the match as I don't see her recovering from this.

After winning this match I think Hou Yifan can forget about playing women-only events. She has nothing to prove by playing the next knockout championship.

Maybe they should include her in the Grand Tour.

[LawrenceCooper]

Her final miscalculation was probably that 38 Bb3 is answered by Bxg3+ mating but once the knight is trapped on h4 then I suspect the advantage is much bigger than the computer assessment of around +1. As Tim mentions she had to play f6 at various points so that the knight can emerge.

[Chris Rice]

After winning this match I think Hou Yifan can forget about playing women-only events. She has nothing to prove by playing the next knockout championship. Maybe they should include her in the Grand Tour.

The interesting thing is that Hou Yifan has challenged whoever won the knockout stages (Ushenina, Mariya Muzychuk). The winner of the knockouts has clearly not been the strongest player. It is evident that Hou Yifan is definitely the strongest women player in the world at present but I think she would struggle to beat players such as Humpy Koneru, Wenjun Ju or even Muzychuk's sister Anna or an accomplished match player such as Kosteniuk.

IMHO they should ditch the KO formula, its not producing quality champions or matches for the WC. Mariya Muzychuk has done better than I thought she would though and of course the match isn't over yet but it has always seemed inevitable that Hou Yifan is going to win.

[Jonathan Bryant]

IIndeed. Muzychuk seemed to lose her way completely when her preparation ran out.
I expect this will prove to be the decisive game of the match as I don't see her recovering from this.

I think that was game 2, tbh.

There’s no disgrace in losing to somebody who’s just better than you. If you are going to get a result, you absolutely have to get a good start. Muzzy didn’t.

[chrisbeckett]

After winning this match I think Hou Yifan can forget about playing women-only events. She has nothing to prove by playing the next knockout championship. Maybe they should include her in the Grand Tour.

The interesting thing is that Hou Yifan has challenged whoever won the knockout stages (Ushenina, Mariya Muzychuk). The winner of the knockouts has clearly not been the strongest player. It is evident that Hou Yifan is definitely the strongest women player in the world at present but I think she would struggle to beat players such as Humpy Koneru, Wenjun Ju or even Muzychuk's sister Anna or an accomplished match player such as Kosteniuk.

IMHO they should ditch the KO formula, its not producing quality champions or matches for the WC. Mariya Muzychuk has done better than I thought she would though and of course the match isn't over yet but it has always seemed inevitable that Hou Yifan is going to win.

I don't agree at all that Hou Yifan would struggle to beat Koneru, Ju, Kosteniuk or indeed any other woman, barring a serious Judit Polgar comeback. Ultimately the gap between her and the (active) chasing pack is more than a hundred rating points so she should - and would - beat them fairly handily, experienced match player or not. Hou Yifan is IMHO much closer to the regular Grand Tour/candidates than her female challengers at the moment.

[Matt Mackenzie]

Hasn't the setup been changed so the match winner (which now looks very likely to be Hou, of course) doesn't have to go through the knockout system, which will just be used to determine the challenger in future?

A more sensible system without doubt, if true, though some of us would still like to see a Candidates event as with the men.

As for likely challengers to a long term HY reign, how about that young Iranian (I won't attempt to spell her name here) who seems to be coming along in leaps and bounds at present?

[Chris Rice]

Hou Yifan can play in the knockout if she wants but she doesn't want to (and who can blame her given that her rating advantage will always give her a shot at whoever is champion) so we are getting champions of the likes of Ushenina (who couldn't mate with knight & bishop if you recall) or Mariya Muzychuk. Hou Yifan as the No 1 player in the world gets to play the knockout winner.

[Tim Harding]

After winning this match I think Hou Yifan can forget about playing women-only events. She has nothing to prove by playing the next knockout championship. Maybe they should include her in the Grand Tour.

The interesting thing is that Hou Yifan has challenged whoever won the knockout stages (Ushenina, Mariya Muzychuk). The winner of the knockouts has clearly not been the strongest player. It is evident that Hou Yifan is definitely the strongest women player in the world at present but I think she would struggle to beat players such as Humpy Koneru, Wenjun Ju or even Muzychuk's sister Anna or an accomplished match player such as Kosteniuk.

IMHO they should ditch the KO formula, its not producing quality champions or matches for the WC. Mariya Muzychuk has done better than I thought she would though and of course the match isn't over yet but it has always seemed inevitable that Hou Yifan is going to win.

I don't agree at all that Hou Yifan would struggle to beat Koneru, Ju, Kosteniuk or indeed any other woman, barring a serious Judit Polgar comeback. Ultimately the gap between her and the (active) chasing pack is more than a hundred rating points so she should - and would - beat them fairly handily, experienced match player or not. Hou Yifan is IMHO much closer to the regular Grand Tour/candidates than her female challengers at the moment.

I am not certain of the current structure. Hou Yifan had the right to challenge the previous knockout winners by virtue of winning the Women's Grand Prix series. She can still win the current cycle if she plays the last two tournaments later this year (having won at Monaco 2015).

Certainly I am with Chris Beckett and in strong disagreement with Chris Rice over Hou Yifan's superiority over her female rivals. The ratings indeed show that she is closer to the top male players than any woman other than Judit Polgar has ever been and she has the potential to surpass Judit's peak.

Forget Humpy Koneru for a start. In 2011 Hou Yifan beat her in a match; the Indian GM didn't win a game and her play seems to going backwards ever since. Admittedly she did win her game with Hou Yifan in Monaco and finished second but that was only one game and the Chinese GM was two points ahead of her. Unlike most of the top women she didn't play in Gibraltar. Koneru was the highest rated in Tehran but only finished sixth.

Kosteniuk will never regain her former strength and I also think that like Ushenina (and arguably Stefanova) she was weaker than most of the women's world champions of the past 30 years. At Gibraltar I saw Kosteniuk completely go to pieces and lose a winning position against Sutovsky.

Ju Wenjun is clearly on the up and won Tehran, where a virtually unknown Iranian teenager came second.

Harika is improving and won a lovely game against Nigel Short in Gibraltar. Pogonina is also a very serious and hard working player.

The Muzychuk sisters are probably on a par now though the Ukrainians may know best; maybe Anna really is still stronger. It's hard to tell what weight to give her Gibraltar victory as the games against men were of course crucial in deciding who won in a very close last couple of rounds.

Hou Yifan is currently a class above all these rivals, though, and I wouldn't be surprised if she gets up to 2700 in a year or two, but to do that she needs to be playing mostly against 2600+ men.

[LawrenceCooper]

https://chess24.com/en/live/video/muzyc ... hip-game-6

[John McKenna]

I am a bit disenchanted with Ms. M. Muzychuk - she's more of a sugar babe than a spice girl. Repeating the Italian game for a second time at this critical stage of the match showed a complete lack of imagination. Now she has four games left to try to redeem herself.

Mme. Hou may be satisfied with drawing the remaining games to win the match 6-4 but if her opponent presses too hard to get a game back the match may end 5.5-2.5 after only two more games.

Let's hope that Yifan & Mariya spice up our chess lives, today.

Waiter, I'd like the Jaenisch Defence to the Ruy Lopez for starters, please.

[John McKenna]

They're ploughing the same Open Spanish furrow for the third time.

I think Muzychuk has varied from last time with 10... Nc5!?

[LawrenceCooper]

I am a bit disenchanted with Ms. M. Muzychuk - she's more of a sugar babe than a spice girl. Repeating the Italian game for a second time at this critical stage of the match showed a complete lack of imagination. Now she has four games left to try to redeem herself.

Mme. Hou may be satisfied with drawing the remaining games to win the match 6-4 but if her opponent presses too hard to get a game back the match may end 5.5-2.5 after only two more games.

Let's hope that Yifan & Mariya spice up our chess lives, today.

Waiter, I'd like the Jaenisch Defence to the Ruy Lopez for starters, please.

It didn't stop her getting a very good position, however unimaginative her opening was.