 We had a very interesting round today.
Stefanova and Ushenina repeated the first 8 moves of Ushenina's game from the previous round with the difference of colors.Yesterday Ushenina was playing with white. Stefanova played
9. e4 which is a well known and popular continuation as it was tested in one of the games of the recent Anand-Gelfand World Championship Match.
Later Stefanova played 14.f4 which was not the main line and Ushenina had to spend almost an hour on her next move.Ushenina has a very good opening preparation but it looked to be a surprise for her.Anyway her answer 14...Bc5 was not the best and she started to have problems with further development of the pieces.Stefanova spent most of her time trying to get immediate advantage, but black's position was still very solid and the game ended in a draw.
The next drawn game was Cmilyte-Khotenashvili.It was a Catalan where white sacrificed a pawn for a long term pressure.After playing 19 moves Cmilyte was able to get the pawn back,but black managed to finish the development and equalize the game.
In this round players with white pieces managed to score 3 victories.
Koneru chose a very aggressive line in Meran variation of Slav defense (7.g4) and Danielyan wasn't quite ready for that.
Black's position is already worse and Elina is making the final mistake allowing Koneru to demonstrate her tactical skills.23...Rhe8 24.Nc5 Ng3 25.Q:c4 N:e4 26 N:b7 K:b7 27.Q:c6 Ka7 28 Nb5+! ab 29.Rd7+
Dzagnidze-Dronavalli was Grunfeld defense with 7.Be3 and 8.Rc1. After exchanging the queens Dzagnidze followed the line with
13Bb5 (Kramnik's favorite move). Later she maintained control over the C file and gradually outplayed her opponent.It's hard to say where black went wrong, but white's victory looked pretty convincing.
A. Muzychuk -T. Kosintseva was the Scheveningen variation of the Sicilian that had been a very strong weapon in Gary Kasparov's hands.
16 g6 was very impressive and black didn't find a satisfactory answer. However as the game continued Kosintseva managed to create a very strong counterplay on the king side and pushed the pawn to f2. It was a real distraction for white, but unfortunately for Tatiana being in time trouble she blundered this pawn.
37...Kg7? 38.Rh1 Bg5. 39 Rdf1 Red7 40.N:c7 R:c7 41 R:f2
O. Girya - B. Tuvshintugs was the only game where black managed to win.
It was an accepted Queen's Gambit where I am sure Olga had some ideas,but in the game we didn't see them.The Mongolian was defending very well and on move 20 had already a winning position.However the technique she was using to convert the advantage wasn't the best and at one point Girya's pieces were so active that it was hard to imagine that she can lose.
after move 30.f6 gf 31 Re7 with Rdd7 treat was enough for a draw.30. Ke3 was played and this was a fatal mistake.
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