The FIDE Chess.com 2022 Ladies’s Velocity Chess Championship continued on Monday with a showdown between the world’s number-one ranked girl participant, GM Hou Yifan, towards the U.S. girls’s chess champion, IM Carissa Yip, which Hou gained in a 21.5-5.5 drubbing with a dominant show throughout all codecs.
Hou barely discovered herself in a worse place, and the efficiency was undoubtedly one of many extra excellent match performances on Chess.com this 12 months. Yip’s youthful ardor and creativity have been admirable regardless of the match rating, and the 5 factors she was in a position to choose up have been phenomenal combating video games.
The following quarterfinal match between compatriots GM Harika Dronavalli and IM Vaishali R will happen on July 21, at 6.30 a.m. Pacific / 15:30 Central.
Blitz 5|1: Hou 7-2 Yip
The hotly-anticipated match started with a worthy curtain-raiser the place Hou used the initiative to power Yip to surrender her queen for a rook and knight. The ensuing endgame was actually profitable for Hou however proved too troublesome whereas low on time, and it was Yip that swindled the sport after the previous girls’s world champion misplaced on time!
Hou appeared to spend the early a part of the match gauging Yip’s fashion, which was predictably each aggressive and uncompromising. After a draw within the third recreation and the scores sitting at 1.5-1.5, Hou determined that sufficient was sufficient and lifted her personal degree of play, scoring two wins again to again, together with a barn-burning 26-mover within the fifth.
Yip steadied the ship with a draw within the following recreation however did miss the chance to steal a degree off of her surging opponent.
After six video games, Hou had re-affirmed herself as the favourite with three wins and two attracts. Nevertheless, Yip was hanging within the match and creating sufficient chaos to maintain issues fascinating. With time rapidly expiring within the 5+1 portion, Hou ran riot, profitable the ultimate three video games and increasing her result in 7-2 with cold-blooded, precision chess.
Hou was not the one one celebrating the early outcomes, and commentators Belenkaya and Santeramo have been fast to notice that the SmarterChess prediction, calculated by NM Matt Jensen, was spot on for the section.
Blitz 3|1: Hou 8-1 Yip
Hou’s dominant run continued into the three+1 section, and she or he was in a position to string collectively a scorching seven-game streak, lengthening her total streak to an astonishing 10 video games in a row. The run included a number of brilliancies which had viewers spamming “Pog” and “OMG” in the course of the Twitch protection.
Expectations have been excessive that Yip would shut the hole barely in the course of the 3+1 video games attributable to her adventurous play, which she exhibited with nice success in her 2021 US girls’s chess championship triumph, however Hou proved to be a reduce above her contenders from that occasion and handled Yip’s romantic play. This included a number of opening surprises, akin to the next wall of pawns and minor items, which Hou rebutted with meticulous accuracy.
The sport featured above was probably the most instructive of the match, and Hou confirmed cope with an over-extended central pawn storm.
Viewer pleasure by no means waned despite the scoreline, and the ultimate recreation of the three+1 portion even featured a place the place White selected to not citadel towards Black’s queenside citadel. Santeramo discovered an beautiful and sophisticated Rg4 transfer that was missed within the precise recreation.
By the point the three+1 video games had wound up, the match was all however over. Hou garnered an unassailable lead of 15-3, however Yip, the extra skilled participant within the quickest time management, actually appeared to have the power to contest her opponent as Hou had proven that her solely weak point to date was her vulnerability to flagging.
Bullet 1|1: Hou 6.5-2.5 Yip
The bullet part was the closest a part of the match, and Yip remained alert and desirous to cease the stampede on the scoreboard. A flash of her tactical prowess and creativity was on show within the twentieth recreation of the match, the place she poetically pounced on a mistake Hou made on transfer 20 after using the seldom-seen Alekhine’s Protection.
Hou had solely a single mishap within the match when she mouse slipped her rook to a sq. the place it could possibly be captured. A wry smile and acknowledgment that she is human in any case and inclined to the occasional blunder could have mere chess mortals resting simpler…
In the long run, Hou was just too constant and took most of her probabilities to place away a defeated Yip even when pressured on the clock. The twenty first recreation of the match summed up the general really feel of the match. Yip enjoying creatively within the opening and gaining cheap positions, the 2 duking out advanced strikes by means of the middlegame, and eventually, Hou discovering a key concept that allowed her to liquidate or checkmate.
The match completed with an something however peaceable draw, which did stop Hou from finishing yet one more five-game streak.
A spine-tingling efficiency from Hou within the match’s closing spherical of 16 earned her a complete of $2,344.91, whereas Yip took dwelling $280.09.
The victory has arrange a mesmerizing conflict between the Chinese language famous person and GM Alexandra Kosteniuk, who’s the reigning girls’s world fast champion and can absolutely go a protracted approach to deciding the ladies’s pace chess champion for 2022.
All Video games – Closing
Ladies’s Velocity Chess Championship 2022 Bracket
The FIDE Chess.com 2022 Ladies’s Velocity Chess Championship is an internet occasion the place titled girls gamers will play a sequence of blitz and bullet matches for a share of the $70,000 prize fund. The qualifiers for the occasion occurred on Could 24-27, with the principle occasion beginning on June 13 and ending on July 21.
Earlier studies:
