Women's World Chess Championship 2011: Fide rep inspects Tirana venue

Chess blog for latest chess news and chess trivia (c) Alexandra Kosteniuk, 2011

Hi everyone,


The women's world chess championship 2011 between Hou Yifan of China and Koneru Humpy of India is round the corner. FIDE Deputy President Georgios Makropoulos was in Albania inspecting the site for the FIDE Women's World Championship Match 2011 to be held in Tirana from 13th November to 30th November. There he met with Mr. Rezart Taçi, the new President of the Albanian Chess Federation and the personal sponsor of the FIDE Women's World Championship.





This is being done through his company, Taçi Oil International Trading and Supply Sh.a. Taçi Oil leads the domestic oil market and its trading arm operates 85 retail stations all over Albania.


Mr. Makropoulos said that he was very grateful to Mr. Taçi for sponsoring the FIDE Women's World Championship Match and that Mr. Taçi's elevation to be President of the Albanian Chess Federation would lead to the growth and development of chess in Albania, as well as to the Federation taking a more active role in FIDE. You can access the official website at this link.


Here are the brief profiles of the two players:

Hou Yifan (born February 27, 1994, in Xinghua, Taizhou, Jiangsu, China) is a Chinese chess prodigy. She is the reigning Women's World Chess Champion, the youngest ever to win the title, as well as the youngest ever female player to qualify for the title of Grandmaster. At the age of 12, she became the youngest ever player to participate at the FIDE Women's World Championship (Yekaterinburg 2006) and at the Chess Olympiad (Torino 2006). In June 2007, she became China's youngest ever National Women's Champion. She had reached the finals in 2008 where Chess Queen Alexandra Kosteniuk was crowned 12th women's world chess champion.

Humpy Koneru became the second female player ever, after Judit Polgár, to exceed the 2600 Elo mark. From 2002 through 2008, Humpy held the record as the youngest woman ever to become a grandmaster (not merely a Woman Grandmaster), which she achieved at the age of 15 years, 1 month, 27 days, beating Judit Polgár's previous mark by three months; however, this has since been surpassed by Hou Yifan. Humpy participated in the FIDE Women's Grand Prix 2009–2011 and finished in overall second position, in turn qualifying as challenger for Women's World Chess Championship 2011.

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