Another wretched day for the seeds

By P. K. Ajith Kumar

NEW DELHI, DEC. 5. Hotel Hyatt Regency is fast turning out to be a graveyard for the top seeds in the women's World chess championship. Seeds two and five were knocked in the third round after tie-breakers on Tuesday. With the quarterfinals scheduled to get underway on Wednesday, only two among the 10 seeds have survived.

The big news of the day was the dismissal of Alisa Galliamova of Russia, the second seed and challenger in the last World championship, by a much younger Almira Skripchenko Lautier of Maldovia. A beaming winner later said, ``this knock-out format will suit youngsters better.''

A little earlier, another young star in the women's game, Natalia Zhukova of Ukraine, also advanced to the last eight, at the expense of the World Cup champion and fifth seed Xu Yuhua of China. It was a sweet revenge for the Ukrainian, who was at the receiving end in the World Cup final in Shenyang in September. Both matches today were decided in the first set of tie-breakers (of 25 games each), with the identical scorelines of 1.5-0.5.

Once again Galliamova gave the Maldovian too many opportunities, and this time she was made to pay for most of them. The game, which began with Almira adopting the Pirc Defence before transposing it into Philidor, saw White fianchettoing the bishop. Defence Galliamova went on the offensive soon, pushing her king- side pawns up, but that did not bring in the desired results.

Black was prepared for the counter-attack from the other flank of the board, centralising her forces. She waited for the right opportunity to strike and played admirably for most of the game. White slowly had to retreat and was forced to defend her less than adequately guarded king.

Almira moved confidently towards victory, picking up king-side pawns on the 47th and 49th moves, but before that she had missed a fork though. On the 42nd move, with a queen check on `d1', she could have forked White's queen and rook, by taking her knight to `d7'. Anyway it did not matter much, as Almira forced Galliamova to resign on the 70th move when she offered her rook for bishop. Her passer on `h' had reached seventh rank.

In the second game too, in which the Maldovian played on the white side of a closed Sicilian Defence, she could have gone for the win and for a 2-0 killing. But she preferred to save her energy for the remaining rounds. ``It is very exhaustive, you know, these games,'' she said.

So she opted to draw the game by repetition of moves, though when the game finally ended after 93 moves, she had a rook, night and three pawns against Black's rook and bishop.

On the adjacent board, Zhukova, with the black pieces, was happy to draw the first game (French Defence Rubinstien). The players decided to split the point after 39 moves in a double rook ending with equal number of pawns.

Then the Ukrainian was really charged up for the second game. ``I thought she wasn't all that good in the ending, and was determined to beat her there,'' she said after the game, though she did not have to wait that long. So, facing the Nimzo- Indian Defence, she exchanged the queen at the earliest opportunity, on the 10th move. She put pressure on the `a' file by doubling up her rook and White was forced to give the pawn on `a6' on the 36th move in order to save her bishop. Six moves later, she had to give up a piece too. Xu resigned on the 52nd move.

The results (round three, tie-breakers): Almira Skripchenko- Lautier (Mda) bt Alisa Galliamova (Rus) 1.5-0.5; Natalia Zhukova (Ukr) bt Xu Yuhua (Chn) 1.5-0.5.

Quarterfinal pairings: Xie Jun (Chn) v Natalia Zhukova (Ukr); Qin Kanying (Chn) v Corina Peptan (Rom); Ekaterina Kovalaveskaya (Rus) v Peng Zhaoqin (Ned); Alisa Maric (Yug) v Almira Skripchenko-Lautier (Mda).

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