Women's World Championship Finals: Stefanova Winning But Ushenina Draws
The first of four scheduled games in the final match of the 2012 Women's World Chess Championship is history, and Anna Ushenina is fortunate to have escaped with a draw. Through the opening and into the early middlegame she was doing fine, enjoying a very slight edge in a Bogo-Indian that turned into a sort of Carlsbad Queen's Gambit Declined without the dark-squared bishops. Ushenina went for the standard minority attack, but messed up the timing and her opponent, former women's champ Antoaneta Stefanova, had a winning attack.
That said, a winning attack doesn't need to issue in mate directly; it might result in material gains, after which the right plan may be to forget about the attack and think instead about converting the extra material. That was the case here: at a certain point Stefanova should have forgotten about trying to mate Ushenina--both because the simple plan of winning White's h-pawn and then subsequently pushing her passed h-pawn home would have been an easy winner, and also because her more bloodthirsty approach let Ushenina escape with a draw.
Game 2 is tomorrow; game 1 can be replayed here, with my comments.
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