Women's World Championship Semi-Finals: Ushenina to Face Stefanova in the Finals
Ju Wenjun had survived tiebreaks the first four rounds, but in round 5 of the 2012 Women's World Chess Championship Anna Ushenina bested her in a pair of tiebreaking rapid games (25' + 10") to reach the finals. Ushenina won the first game with White in a sharp Saemisch King's Indian with the players castling on opposite wings. It looks like Ju Wenjun's play of playing ...exd4 followed by ...Ne5 was a good one, but should have been played without the preliminary 13...b4. In many circumstances shoving the enemy knight to the edge is beneficial, but in this case it helped White: 16.c5 was wonderfully synergetic: the pawn could advance because of the knight on a4, and after 16...d5 the pawn on c5 supported the knight's trip to b6. Black's center and kingside were soon in danger of disintegration, and Ju sacrificed a piece to try to scare up some counterplay. It looked dangerous, especially in the context of a rapid game, but Ushenina handled it very well and won with impressive ease.
In the rematch, Ju ground away on the white side of a slow (4.e3) Slav, and reached an ending with two pawns for the exchange (and later three) and very good winning chances. Indeed, the ending was eventually winning, but perhaps from exhaustion, time pressure, or some combination of the two, Ju was unable to find it. I think too as a psychological matter she was afraid to jettison any of her pawns, but had she done so at an appropriate moment the win would have been relatively simple. Finally, Ushenina was off the hook after 66.e7??, after which Black achieved an impermeable fortress. (One winning line: 66.Be5+ Kf8 67.Kg6 Rg1+ 68.Kf6 Rh1 and here, for instance, shedding the h-pawn for the sake of the connected passers will do the trick: 69.f4 Rxh5 70.f5 Rh1 71.Bf4 Re1 72.Kg6 Ke7 [or 72...Ke8 73.f6! Rxe6 74.f7+-] 73.Bg5+ Ke7 74.f6 Rxe6 75.Kg7 and wins.) By move 78 Ju had pushed her pawns as far as they could go, and now White played on for 66 moves before giving in to the inevitable.
So this time around the Occident triumphed over the Orient, and we'll have a 4-game final between 2004 Women's Champ Antoaneta Stefanova and Ushenina starting Tuesday, after the rest day on Monday.
Reader Comments (1)
I felt like it was an internet 3min game between troll types at the point of the 66 move dragging out of the inevitable.
Ju like many people (mostly anon players on the internet) just couldnt let it go and *needed* to draw/lose because of the rules and "not herself"...
And her opponent, as I believe should be done in all these ridiculous cases, trolled her right back and even rubbed it in... not declaring 50 moves or 3 fold, and sometimes teasing with putting her rook on dark squares.
[DM: I'm normally not a fan of this myself, but when it's a rapid game and anything but a win means elimination from the semi-finals of the world championship, it's hard not to cut her some slack - especially when she was winning with a capital W through much of the game.]