Hou Yifan regains Women's World Championship

Congratulations to Hou Yifan, who decisively regained the Women's World Championship, beating Anna Ushenina 5.5-1.5 in the match, scheduled for 10 games. In an unusual reversal of the classic "win as White, draw as Black" formula, Hou won all three of her games as Black, while drawing her first three games as White. As White in the seventh game, she routed Ushenina, giving her the 5 1/2 points necessary to secure the title. All of the games are available on the match website.

Hou Yifan's 78.6% score is the most decisive match result in Women's World Championship history since Gaprindashvili routed Bykova 9-2 (+7 =4, 81.8%) in 1961. Even Vera Menchik's two match wins, against Sonja Graf in 1934 (+3 -1, 75%) and 1937 (+9 =5 -2, 71.9%) were less lopsided. Here is the decisive game:

Everybody makes mistakes

...especially when the clock is ticking. The reigning Women's World Champion, Anna Ushenina, joins the large and distinguished group led by Grandmaster Vladimir Epishin who have failed to mate in fifty moves with king, bishop, and knight against king.  It's really not that hard if you've studied the ending. (I think I could do it on increment alone, but I'm honestly not sure: I saw games between strong class players in the 2012 U.S. Open and a recent Chicago Open in which the game was similarly drawn.)

Ushenina knew the "W" technique for driving the defending king to a corner controlled by the bishop. But she didn't understand the one position in which the defender seems to escape the side of the board, only to be caught in a net that includes the "danger corner" controlled by the bishop.

Suppose you want to drive the defending king from a1 (a dark corner) to h1 (a light corner controlled by your bishop). 

• You will want to put your knight on c2 to keep the defender from returning to a1. (Ushenina did this this on move 78.) 
• Then you will want to put your bishop on a2 (star move!) to keep the defender from returning to b1. (Ushenina did this on move 79.) 
• Now the horse on c2 is freed to execute the "W-manuever" to transfer the knight from c2 to e2. (A knight always controls squares of the opposite color, so you want to hurry your horse from c2 to e2 as quickly as possible: it's not doing you any good when it's controlling squares of the same color as the bishop.) 
• Ushenina's first major inexactitude was 82.Bd5?! The correct move here is 82.Ne2, and if Black tries to break toward freedom with 82...Kf3, then 83.Be6! Now White controls e4 with king, f4 and g3 with knight, and g4 and h3 with bishop: that's a very effective force field!
• Olga Girya ran away from the dangerous h1 square to the relative safety of the h8 square. 
• On move 101, Ushenina seems to have lost confidence in her technique, as she fails to implement the winning 101.Bh7! (an idea she'd already used earlier.) 

I was an expert for many years before I learned the correct technique from a beginner's book: thank you, Pandolfini's Endgame Course.

Never say die! redux

Last Christmas I published Latino-Dumas, a game in which White on move 3 hung an entire piece to a queen check. Rather than resigning (as some others had done in the same position), Latino played on and went on to win the game! Here's a similar example: White blunders a piece on move 5, also to ...Qa5+, yet goes on to win. White's 6.Nc3 is an improvement on GM Ivan Farago's "Resigns," as in Farago-Bliumberg, 1994. To be precise, 6.Nc3! had been seen before, in Kunte (2536!)-Varga (2494!), 2008. That game ended in a draw!

How strong was the loser of our subject game, who won a whole piece on move 5, but went on to lose? She is Anna Ushenina, who at the time of this game was rated 2458. Later in the year, she went on to win the Women's World Championship, thereby automatically becoming a grandmaster.

It's fascinating to analyze this game with an engine. How could a strong player go from being a clear piece up to losing the game? She didn't play a terrible blunder, but rather a number of second-best moves: 11...b5 (11...Qb4! 12.Qe2 Bxd4-+), the weakening 14...gxf5?! (14...O-O), 20...Bb7?! (20...Qb5), the decentralizing 21...Nh5?!, 23...a5? (23...Nhf6!), and 24...Bg7? (24...Nhf6!). Her final mistake was 25...Ndf6? According to Houdini 3, she would still have kept a large advantage with 25...a4!, driving the bishop off the a2-g8 diagonal, e.g. 26.Bd1 Ndf6 27.Be2 (27.e5 c5! 28.exf6 Nxf6!) Kf8 28.Nd6 exd6! 29.Bxb5 cxb5 30.d5 Re8. Of course, all of this is much easier to see with Houdini, rather than a ticking clock, next to you.

The moral(s) of the story? Don't expect a "won game" to win itself. Stay alert and try to play the most accurate and incisive moves. Don't be afraid to give back some material to simplify the position into one that you can win more easily and/or gives the opponent fewer counterchances.

On the other side of the board: if you have a losing position, don't mentally give up the game. Keep the position complicated, and keep setting problems for your opponent. Be alert to tactical chances. Don't resign unless you have no realistic chance of winning or drawing the game. (This will vary depending not only on the position, but also on your strength, your opponent's strength, and the clock situation. Ushenina would probably have won this game if at had been played at a standard time control rather than rapid.)

Anna Ushenina takes Women's World Championship

Congratulations to Anna Ushenina of Ukraine, who beat former champion Antoaneta Stefanova of Bulgaria in a playoff today.