Last Chance Reunion

The impending 64-player Women’s World Chess Championship Knockout Tournament has been announced to be the last one of the controversial series inaugurated in 2000. FIDE President Arkady Vladimirovich Dvorkovich, indeed, respected his electoral promise to reform the Women’s World Chess Championship format system, as it is said in a statement published on the FIDE web site last October 22: “Following the change in the system of the Women’s World Championship, the amendment to the regulations of the Women’s World Championship 2018 has been made: all semi-finalists except for the eventual winner will qualify to the forthcoming Women’s Candidate Tournament of the 2019-2020 cycle”. A parade of Queens will write the last words of a long and short story at the Ugra Chess Academy in Khanty-Mansiysk, Russia since November 2, 2018. 17th Women’s World Chess Champion 居文君 (Jū Wénjūn) will take part in it, thus putting at stake the crown she conquered just a few months ago. She knows that she could go down in history as the shortest time Women’s World Champion ever, but she said that, whatever it is, she won’t make a drama of it. 16th Women’s World Chess Champion 谭中怡 (Tán Zhōngyí), too, will be in the race, in a kind of armistice, after having been excluded from the national team for the whole of the 43rd Olympiad. Instead, four-time Women’s World Chess Champion 侯逸凡 (Hóu Yìfán), a long time opposer of the current format system, while being discharged by both the Fédération Internationale des Échecs (FIDE) and the Chinese Chess Association, fled in search of higher skies in Great Britain, where she was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship to study for a Master’s Degree in Education at the University of Oxford. As for chess, she’s probably waiting for brighter opportunities in the future. Humpy Koneru returns after a long absence due to her pregnancy, just to find out that nothing has changed since then. And then there are Anna Olehivna Muzychuk and Mariya Olehivna Muzychuk, the Ukrainian Sister Queens, once again together in Russia to make the big shot. And last but not least the Russian stars: Alexandra Konstantinovna Kosteniuk, Aleksandra Yuryevna Goryachkina, Valentina Evgenyevna Gunina, who hope to deny the saying that nemo propheta in patria. And so on, until. Here is the list of all participants.

From left: 谭中怡 (Tán Zhōngyí), 余少腾 (Yú Shǎoténg), and 居文君 (Jū Wénjūn) spotted on the flight from Moscow to Khanty-Mansiysk. Photo: Russian Chess Federation (@ruchess_ru).

Most of the other participants were apparently traveling on the same flight, such as Anna Olehivna Muzychuk (centre) and Mariya Olehivna Muzychuk (right). Photo: Russian Chess Federation (@ruchess_ru).