Many of the world's strongest women chess players are participating, and it's bound to be one of the most fascinating rapid tournaments of the year.
Kosteniuk Alexandra
Zhukova Natalia
Menzi Nezihe Ezgi
Kosintseva Nadezhda
Kosintseva Tatiana
Cramling Pia
Klinova Masha
Yildiz Betul Cemre
Ozturk Kubra
Javakhishvili Lela
Cmilyte Viktorija
Socko Monika
After the first 4 rounds I have 4 out of 4 and am sharing first place with Viktoria Cmilyte.
I won all my games today against Nadezhda Kosintseva, Monika Socko, Natalia Zhukova and Ezgi Menzi Nezihe.
Tomorrow, December 2 we will play 4 more rounds and then on December 3 we will finish the tournament with 3 more rounds. The games can be seen LIVE here. We play at 11:30 AM, 12:30 PM, 4 PM and 5 PM local time (GMT +2 which is one hour after Paris and one hour before Moscow, or 7 hours after New York EST).
The organization is excellent and during the opening ceremony the president of the Turkish Chess Federation Ali Yazici told everybody that in the next few years Turkey will organize many world class women chess events, including the Women's World Chess Championship in 2010 and Women's World Team Championship in 2011.
Ali Yazici during the opening ceremony
The Playing Hall
Below are two fragments of my games of today. In both of them it's White to move, try to find the best continuation for White.
Kosteniuk - Zhukova, 1st round, White to move.
Kosteniuk - Nadezhda Kosintseva, 4th round, White to move.
On the official web-site of the organizers you can find the games, the photos and all the information about the tournament.
I will let you know in more details how it went after the tournament will be over, in 2 days. The current crosstable can be found here.
Posted by: Alexandra Kosteniuk
Women's World Chess Champion
Always enjoy your games and annotations! Keep up the Great work! Billy Wiseman
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