Xie Jun in fine form

By P.K. Ajith Kumar

NEW DELHI, DEC. 6. Xie Jun showed on Wednesday why she is the World champion. The top seed from China scored a fine victory over Natalia Zhukova of Ukraine in the first game of the quarterfinals of the women's World chess championship at Hyatt Regency, but she still wasn't entirely happy with the game. But then, true champions rarely are.

Ekaterina Kovalevskaya of Russia posted an easy win over Peng Zhaoqin of the Netherlands, who just played into her hands. The games between Qin Kanying of China and Corina Peptan of Romania and Alisa Maric and Almira Skripchenko-Lautier of Moldovia were drawn.

Jun and Zhukova were playing for the third time, after drawing both the previous games. Today, playing on the white side of a French Defence Tarrasch, Jun was in fine form. She was also helped by Zhukova whose decision to take her knight back to `f8' on the 10th move wasn't probably the best under the circumstances. White did not wait to exchange her `c' pawn and could take control of the `d4' square.

Jun went on to capitalise on her advantage in the opening in admirable fashion and won in 40 moves. For Zhukova, a very fine player herself who has had some very good results in recent times including the runner-up spot in the World Cup and the European women's title, on the other hand, it was a long struggle. She was in time trouble too. Like her, her king too was looking rather vulnerable, uncastled and open to threats.

The World champion got everything right today, like retaining her strong knight in the centre. Then she made things happen. With seven pawns on either side, the position was looking pretty cramped. She sacrificed her knight on the 37th move and opened up the centre, as her `e' pawn broke through protected by the rook. The mighty pawn, which reached `f7', challenged the black queen, and king had to come forward and kill it. It was all over for the Ukrainian soon, with the mate well in sight, after the white queen also moved to the `e' file.

``Even though it was a good win, I wasn't quite happy with the way I played today,'' Jun said after the game. ``Yes, Zhukova is a good player, but she did not play well in this game,'' she added.

It was a bad day for French Defence, as Peng also lost with it, in the Winawer variation. ``For me everything went wrong today,'' she said after resigning on the 26th move. She thought she was going to get an exchange on the 18th move with a bishop pin of rook and queen, but had overlooked a threatening queen check for the rival. Her long-castled king was in all sorts of trouble after she had pushed the `b' pawn recklessly forward. Black gave up when she was faced with an unpleasant choice of mate or heavy loss of material.

Corina, who adopted Sicilian Defence, defended well with her bad bishop against Kanying's knight to draw in 49 moves. Almira, who accepted the Queen's Gambit from Alisa, was also happy to draw after 24 moves. ``My opponent was in severe time trouble. She had to play all her remaining moves in seven minutes,'' said the Moldovian, who is a fine manager of time.

The results (quarterfinals: game one): Xie Jun (Chn) bt Natalia Zhukova (Ukr); Ekaterina Kovalevskaya (Rus) bt Peng Zhaoqin (Ned); Qin Kanying (Chn) drew with Corina Peptan; Alisa Maric (Yug) drew with Almira Skripchenko-Lautier.

Caption:

Ekaterina Kovalevskaya of Ukraine (right), who won game one of her quarterfinal against Peng Zhaoqin of the Netherlands in the women's World chess championship.

Photo: S. Subramanium

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