The European Championship for Women 2012 has finished about one and a half week ago and I wanted to write a small review about my performance in the tournament. It was held in Gaziantep (Turkey),which is located close to the Syrian border. The new European Champion is Valentina Gunina, who managed to overtake Anna Muzychuk in their last round encounter. Tatiana Kosintseva became 2nd and Anna Muzychuk 3rd.I became joined 5th to 11th (8th on "tiebreak") and with this result I managed to qualify for the new World Cup (probably in 2014?).
China became World Champion, we ended in 6th place.
The Women's World Championship has ended and we are back home. China became champion, while Russia and Georgia got silver and bronze respectively.
Our team recovered from a disastrous start (though I have to say Georgia, China and India are of course not the weakest team!) and ended up in 6th place. I also had a bad start, losing in round 2-4. Luckily I could recover with 4 wins in a row, closing with a short draw against Tatiana Kosintseva in the final round. The tournament was not the best one for Armenia, but probably we ended in the right place considering our starting position.
In the 2nd round we lost against the strong team of Georgia with 2½ - 1½. Lilit Mkrtchian, Lilit Galojan and Maria Kursova played a draw with their opponents. I was already very bad right after the opening and I couldn't overcome the problems. My 10...Qc7 was already a bad move, instead of that I had various moves that were much better. After my horrible 11...Bxc3 Dzagnidze continued in the strongest way and she found a nice winning combination. For me not a good beginning of the tournament and of course the saddest part is that team also lost.
The Women's World Team Championship 2011 is held in Mardin, Turkey, which is located close to the border of Syria. In the Championship 10 teams are competing, playing 9 rounds. My team consist of me, Lilit Mkrtchian (2469), Lilit Galojan (2383), Maria Kursova (2315) and Nelly Aginian (2263). Based on rating we are seeded 6th. The big favourites on paper are China and Russia, but they will have very strong competition from for example India, Georgia and Ukraine.
The 1st degree State Medal for rendered Great Services to the Country
On Saturday 15 October, we were celebrating the 60th Anniversary of Armenian Grandmaster Rafael. Vaganian. Amongst the honouring guests were Armenian President and President of the Armenian Chess Federation Serzh Sargsyan, President of FIDE Kirsan Ilyumzhinov and President of ECU Silvio Danailov.
For his birthday, Rafael Vaganian got an appartment as present from Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan and a Kalmyk horse from FIDE President Kirsan Illyumzhinov.
Beside that Rafael Vaganian and the Armenian national team, which became World Champion, have been awarded by President of Armenia with 1st degree State Medal for rendered Great Services to the Country. To my big and pleasant surprise I was also awarded that highest State Medal.
Won the bronze medal, Viktorija Cmilyte is European Champion!
After a short draw against Antoaneta Stefanova and a short draw at first board, I took bronze medal with 8 points out of 11, Stefanova became 2nd with 8,5 and the European Champion is Viktorija Cmilyte with 9 out of 11. My congratulations to Viktorija for this fantastic result!
Played a draw in round 9, in joined 5th place now!
In the 9th round I had to play Tatiana Kosintseva with white. I drew in a very complicated endgame, in which the position was all the time quite equal (probably in mutual timetouble we both missed some chances), but right after timetouble my opponent missed a good opportunity to make the game rather unpleasant for me, when she played 41..Re8 instead of 41...Rc2!.
I am now in shared 5th place with 6,5 out of 9. Viktorija Cmilyte is the sole leader with 7,5-9. In round 10, I have to play against first seeded Nadezhda Kosintseva (2567) with Black.
The full pairings of round 10 you can see here and the standings after round 9 are to be seen here.
Elina Danielian (Armenia, 2506) - Tatiana Kosintseva (Russia, 2559) European Women's Chess Championship 2011, 9th round; Tbilisi, Georgia 16.05.2011
The rounds will start everyday at 15:00h (+2 CET) , the 11th and last round is at 18 May and will start at 11:00h (+2 CET). We have a free day at Saturday 14 May.
You can check the official site for all information. Here, here and here, you can find the many live games.
Today, in the 8th round I won with Black against GM Hoang Thanh Trang from Hungary (2456) and I moved up to the shared 3rd place.
I had two very strong Knights and one of them make an exceptionally nice manouevre in between move 21 and 29! I played 22...Qc7, with the idea of this manouevre and after she played 23.Ba1?, I got the oppurtunity to play it (Nd7-c5-d3-f2-h1-g3-h5). Of course it is also so very nice, because it was winning.
In round 9, I have to play against 2nd seed Tatiana Kosintseva (2559) from Russia and I will have white. The last 3 rounds are coming and the tension and nervousness are increasing, so that will play a big role.
The full pairings of round 9 you can see here and the standings after round 8 you can find here.
Hoang Thanh Trang (Hungary, 2456 - Elina Danielian (Armenia, 2506) European Women's Chess Championship 2011, 8th round; Tbilisi, Georgia 15.05.2011
After 7 rounds I am in joined 6th place with 5 out of 7. There are 2 leaders with 6 out of 7. (Viktorija Cmilyte from Lithuania and Bela Khotenashvili from Georgia). My play is quite ok, but I made some blunders, a losing one against Viktorija Cmilyte in round 5 and in round 7, I blundered away a pawn in a very good position against Anna Muzychuk.
In round 8 I have to play with the black pieces against GM Hoang Thanh Trang (2456) from Hungary. The pairings of round 8 you can see here and the standings you can find here.
Rounds 1-7, European Women's Chess Championship 2011; Tbilisi, Georgia, 06.05.2011/19.05.2011
The 1st Grand Prix Series for Women has just finished. I would like to express my thankful words towards FIDE and Global Chess. They succeeded in organizing a strong women's tournaments series. Special thank to all federations and organizers of each leg of Grand Prix Series, for supporting and promoting women's chess. I also would like to thank Qatar Chess Federation for their warm hospitality, excellent organization and the chess fest they gave to us. I hope the idea of Grand Prix Series for women will live on in the future.
I would like to spend a few words about my performance in Doha. Honestly saying I am a little upset, because the way the tournament went, I should have won it! On the other side, I can't complain about my result and overall result in the Grand Prix Series (I became 5th, behind Hou Yifan, Koneru Humpy, Nana Dzagnidze and Tatiana Kosintseva). I played nice and interesting games, full of fighting. I had an excellent start with 5 out of 5. In the 2nd part of the tournament I scored 3 out of 6, normally enough to win the tournament, but Koneru Humpy had the opposite tournament, starting slow and finishing with 5,5 out of 6!
Anyway I am satisfied about my performance in Doha. I won 31 ratingpoints and I had the highest performance with 2663.
I want to congratulate Humpy Koneru with her achievement and the right to play the World Championship match against reigning World Champion and winner of the 1st Women's Grand Prix Series Hou Yifan.
To finish I want to show you my game against Maia Chiburdanidze after she made the move 38...Be7?. After that careless move, the game went into a very wild and complicated mode. Most analyses I made just after the game, because I didn't want to forget the lines I saw over the board.
Elina Danielian (2454, Armenia) - Maia Chiburdanidze (2502, Georgia) Round 2, Women's Grand Prix Tournament; Doha, Qatar
You can check the official site for all information and also take a look at their nice photogallery! Click here for all the games of the tournament in PGN.
Click on the links below for all my other round reports of the Women's Grand Prix Tournament 2011 in Doha, Qatar.
Finally, here is the final report of the 1st Cento International Chess Tournament. After losing in round 8 against GM Roland Salvador (2530, The Phillipines) I played a draw in 11 moves against GM Sabino Brunello (2541) from Italy. My final score was 6 out of 9 and I took the joined 9th place with a performance rating of 2609! I won 21 rating points, which is also very nice.. »»
Here are my games of the tournaments, some of the games I annotated with some comments!
Round 1-9, 1st Cento International Chess Open; Pieve di Cento, Italy
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European Individual Women's Chess Championship 2012 (01-03-2012/14-03-2012)
