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:

A trap in the Rubinstein French

The Rubinstein French (1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 (or 3.Nd2) dxe4) is a solid if somewhat passive line for Black. White is theoretically better because of his spatial advantage, but in practice this is not always so easy to prove. In my mind the following trap in the Rubinstein will always be associated with NM (and ICCM) Steve Tennant, who I saw pull it off in a tournament game about 35 years ago.

Unlike some other traps, such as the optically similar Caro-Kann trap 1.e4 c6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 dxe4 4.Nxe4 Nd7 5.Qe2?! (hoping for 5...Ngf6?? 6.Nd6#!), 6.Qe2 against the Rubinstein is a good move even if Black avoids the trap. White gets his queen off the back rank and prepares a future O-O-O. The move has been played by the likes of world #1 Magnus Carlsen (in the game below) and World Champion Viswanathan Anand. After the natural 6...Nxe4 7.Bxe4(!) Nf6?, White wins a pawn with 8.Bxb7! Bxb7 9.Qb5+. The databases show that the trap is very successful: in 365chess.com's database, the position after 7.Bxe4 was seen exactly 100 times. Black fell into the trap with 7...Nf6? 60% of the time! I was astonished to see that victims included chess legends GM Ratmir Kholmov and former Women's World Champion Nona Gaprindashvili!

Stunning decoys

(And no, we're not talking about carved wooden mallard ducks.) One final tactical example from Yakov Neistadt's Improve Your Chess Tactics (New in Chess, 2011): buy this book!

The legendary Nona Gaprindashvili missed an amazing shot in her 1979 game from the Soviet Championship with Irina Levitina. I'll quote from Neistadt's explanation, but I'll leave out the amazing move she missed.

Levitina-Gaprindashvili, Tbilisi 1979

White to play has to stop mate on g2 somehow....

Neistadt writes:

"Black has just played her queen to f3, to threaten mate.  In reply to 1.Qc6 (or 1.Qxe5+ Bf6 2.Qe4 Rfe8, Gaprindashvili's original calculations had gone 1...e4 and after 2.Qxe4 the decoy sacrifice 2...Rge8 3.Nxe8+ Rxe8.  But when the white queen appeared on c6, she realized that at the end of this variation, White in her turn can attack the queen with 4.Nd4

Levitina-Gaprindashvili, Tbilisi 1979

Analysis after 4.Nd4: Black to play

(4...Rxe4 5.Nxf3), and Gaprindashvili was forced to abandon her original intention.  Instead of 1...e4 she played 1...Qf5 and soon lost.

However, [...]"

So what did Nona miss?