Women's Chess Kaleidoscope: Sweden, Germany, Spain, Canada, Scotland and many more.

Summer is usually hot not only in terms of the weather conditions but also in terms of number of very interesting tournaments. Women achieved a few noticeable results playing in men's
competitions this week.

Pia Cramling (on the photo below) became the runner-up of the Swedish Championship. She finished second with 8,5 points out of 13.

Elizabeth Paehtz with whom I met for the first time over the board in 1994 finished third with 6 points out of 11 in a strong closed tournament in Berlin.

A few interesting tournaments are going on right now.

Diputación Foral de Gipuzkoa Tournament in San-Sebastian is still under way. After 6th rounds Sophie Milliet and Jana Melnikova are sharing first place with 5 points. They are followed by Sachdev Tania and Regina Pokorna with 3.5 points.

Scottish Chess Championship is taking place from July 11 till July 19 in Edinburgh. After 3 rounds GM Ketevan Arakhamia-Grant is sharing the third place with 2.5 points.

The Canadian Open Chess Championship started a few days ago, many strong GM's are taking part in this open, including Alexei Shirov and Michael Adams. A few very strong women chess-players are also playing in this competition such as Zhao Xue (2544) and Irina Krush (2481).

At the end of this post enjoy this nice ending combination from the 12th round of the Swedish Championship between Pia Cramling (white) and Blomqvist (black).

It's White to move and it seems that even though the Black's position is passive but at least it's quite solid. In fact, Pia will need only 5 more moves to finish the game.


29. Nc5! a fork! Using the fact that after taking on c5, the d-file becomes an open-file and the rook on d1 will be at the right time in the right place. 29. ... Bxc5 30. dxc5 Ke7 (the pawn on c5 is untouchable since after 30. ... Nxc5 White will win the knight by playing 31. Nd6+) 31.Rcd2! (doubling rooks on the open-file) Nf8 32.Nb6 Re8 33.Rd7+! delivering the final blow. Black resigned. 1-0

Here is the pgn of the whole game. You can review it by simply copying and pasting into pgnplayer.com

[Event "ch-SWE"]
[Site "Kungsor SWE"]
[Date "2009.7.10"]
[Round "12"]
[White "Cramling,P"]
[Black "Blomqvist,E"]
[Result "1-0"]
[Eco "D17"]
1.d4 d5 2.c4 c6 3.Nf3 Nf6 4.Nc3 dxc4 5.a4 Bf5 6.Ne5 Nbd7 7.Nxc4
Nb6 8.Ne5 a5 9.e3 g6 10.Bd3 Bxd3 11.Nxd3 Nbd5 12.Qb3 Qb6 13.Qxb6
Nxb6 14.Ke2 Bg7 15.b3 O-O 16.Bd2 Nfd7 17.Rac1 e6 18.Ne4 Ra7 19.Rhd1
Rd8 20.Be1 Nd5 21.Nd6 Bf8 22.Nc4 Rda8 23.e4 Nc7 24.f3 f6 25.Rc2
Ra6 26.Bf2 Rd8 27.g4 Kf7 28.Be1 Rda8 29.Nc5 Bxc5 30.dxc5 Ke7
31.Rcd2 Nf8 32.Nb6 Re8 33.Rd7+ 1-0

Posted by: Alexandra Kosteniuk
Women's World Chess Champion
Women's blog www.chessblog.com

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