Kanying, Maric enter semifinals

By P.K. Ajith Kumar

NEW DELHI, DEC. 8. Qin Kanying and Alisa Maric entered the semifinals of the women's world chess championship. Corina Peptan and Almira Skripchenko-Lautier had only to blame themselves, after making costly mistakes in the tie-breakers in the quarterfinals at Hyatt Regency on Friday.

The fifth seeded Kanying of China beat Corina Peptan of Romania 2-0, and Maric of Yugoslavia also finished with the equally flattering scoreline against Maldovan Almira, as both the matches were decided after the first set of tie-breakers (of 25 minutes each). And it was a day niether Almira nor Corina would love to remember, as their impressive campaigns came to a sad end.

Though it would not be easy to pick the biggest mistake from the four games today, the one made by Corina in the first game should take some beating. In the Ruy Lopez game, the Romanian, with white pieces, blundered her bishop early on in the game. White had no problem until she picked the wrong knight on the 18th move.

Her bishop on `g5 was captured on the previous move by Blacks bishop and she should have completed the exchange immediately by playing the knight on `f3, but she decided to take the other knight, on `e3 to `d5 and threatened the rival queen, which promptly moved back to `d8, only too happy to protect the bishop in trouble. White, thus a piece down, could have hardly done anything in the game, unless of course Qin decided to return the favour. The Chinese girl was in mood to oblige and Corina resigned after 26 moves. ``I simply did not see that I was losing that piece,'' she said later, with a smile.

After that disaster, it was not surprising to see the Romanian, who made a fine impression here with her otherwise solid display in the championship, playing so passively in the second game. Playing on the white side of a Sicilian Rossolimo, Qin had no difficulty to take control from the opening. She had a potent attack on the king-side, and was in such a strong position that she could offer her knight twice inside five moves, and had different options to finish off. White could not have accepted the offer because there were mating threats. ``This is so unlike the Corina Peptan we know,'' commented Valery Salov seeing the position.

Black was forced to give an exchange on the 33rd move, and she resigned on the 36th move, with mate not far away. And she would have lost her queen following a rook check on the next move. ``I was not prepared for the tie-breakers,'' said the Romanian. Qin, understandably happy with her days work, said, ``I now just want to give a strong challenge for the title.''

Later in the evening Corina joked she might feel better if she had a look at Almira's games. She did have a look at those games on the monitor, and saw the Maldovan mated in the first game.

A grave miscalculation saw Almira, who accepted the Queens Gambit again from the Yugoslavian, losing an exchange and a pawn by the 18th move. She first gave her `g7 pawn on the 15th move and overlooked a knight check on `b6 forking the rook. She was forced to kill the knight with her queen and had to give the rook on the other side. The white queen had already wreaked havoc on the king-side. From that already poor position she played on, and thought she got the exchange and pawn back on the 21st move, but had overlooked the mate on `c8 with the queen check on the very next move.

Alisa had no problem in wrapping up the match, winning the second game in 29 moves of French Defence (closed), as Almira continued to play miserably.

The results (quarterfinals, tie-breakers): Qin Kanying (Chn) bt Corina Peptan (Rom) 2-0; Alisa Maric (Yug) bt Almira Skripchenko- Lautier 2-0.

Semifinal pairings: Ekaterina Kovalevskaya (Rus) v Xie Jun (Chn); Qin Kanying (Chn) v Alisa Maric (Yug).

Qin Kanying of China (left) shakes hands with Romania's Corina Peptan after their quarterfinal game in the women's World chess championship in New Delhi. Kanying beat Peptan 2-0 to enter the semifinals.

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