The Painter’s Studio

After her victorious début yesterday against International Master Gunay Vugar qizi Mammadzada, today, four-time Women’s World Chess Champion and Rhodes Scholar 侯逸凡 (Hóu Yìfán) met and lost to her archrival Anna Yuriyivna Ushenina in the quarterfinals of the 2nd leg of the 1st Online Women’s Speed Chess Championship Grand Prix, held online at chess.com. And thus in the end, Ushenina won and went through semifinal, finally finding in FIDE’s virtual world those satisfactions she never had in the “real” (offline) world. For other aspects, however, both the gambling format of the matches (a 30-minute segment of 5+1 games, a 30-minute segment of 3+1 games, and a 10-minute segment of 1+1 games) and the non-accessibility of the public to the games, ended up making this event quite unmemorable for everyone in the queue — except, perhaps, for artists and designers. Screenshot from the live stream.