Top women's seeds have it easy

By P. K. Ajith Kumar

NEW DELHI, DEC. 2. She may have become the World champion almost a decade ago, but this is a brand new experience for Xie Jun. She seems to be getting used to it pretty fast. The top seed took only the first set of tie-breakers to overcome Svetlana Matveeva of Russia (1.5-0.5), and moved into the third round of the women's World chess championship at Hyatt Regency on Saturday.

Second-seeded Alisa Galliamova of Russia also made it to the third round, with an identical 1.5-0.5 victory over Natasja Bojkovic of Yugoslavia. Then later in the night, Julia Demina of Russia clinched the last available berth for the third round, edging out Cuba's Maritza Arribas.

Jun made her position pretty comfortable winning the first game in the tie-breaker with black pieces. She adopted King's Indian Defence to Matveeva's queen pawn push, and went on to play, in her own words, ``really well.''

On the 26th move, white took her knight to `f5' and got it exchanged with bishop, creating another weak pawn. She already had a weak pawn `c5'. Then Matveeva put herself under more pressure by going for the exchange of rooks on `d8'. That also gave the champion total control of the `d' file, through which she advanced her other rook. She captured the `f5' pawn on the 38th move, after taking her rook to `f4', and forcing an exchange.

Then on the 43rd move, Jun advanced her king to `e3', to enforce her attack in the minor piece ending. Though white won the `a5' pawn four moves later, the Chinese woman got one back on the 50th move, taking the `f3' pawn with her king. Then on the 53rd move, the Russian decided to take the `c6' pawn, instead of pushing her `b' pawn forward. ``I think that was a mistake from her,'' Jun later said.

Black would not have been in much bother in any case, as she had ominous looking pawns on the king-side. On the 64th move, she gave her bishop on `h2' to queen her `f' pawn. That happened immediately and Matveeva resigned after 72 moves.

Thus the top seed needed only to draw the next game with white pieces, which she did after 39 moves of French Defence by perpetual checks. ``I could have pressed for a win in that game too,'' she said, ``but I wanted to play safe.''

Galliamova, after drawing the first game in 61 moves from a Sicilian Defence, had to win the second if she did not want to go into the 15-minute tie-breakers. With white pieces, she went a pawn up on the 21st move in a Sicilian Paulsen variation and was on her way to a 60-move win, as she had a passer on the centre. The Yugoslavian resigned in a hopeless position, a piece and two pawns down.

lThe results (Round two, tie-breakers): Xie Jun (Chn) bt Svetlana Matveeva (Rus) 1.5-0.5; Alisa Galliamova (Rus) bt Natasja Bojkovic (Yug) 1.5-0.5.

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