Women's World Championship 2006

Xu Yuhua, Women's World Chess Champion

Some high-profile heads had already started to roll by Round 2 when defending champion Anoaneta Stefanova (Bulgaria) lost 3-1 to Iweta Radziewicz (Poland); the highly-favoured Humpy Koneru (India) also lost 3-1 to Marie Sebag (France); GM Pia Cramling (Sweden) lost to Zhaoqin Peng (Netherlands), while Georgia's Nana Dzagnidze who performed so well last year lost to China's Wenjun Ju. Australia's representative, Irina Berezina (2285) lost to Subbaraman Vijayalakshmi (2479) in Round 1.

After Round 3 only eight players remained, including chess legend, Georgia's Maia Chiburdanidze who needed all her tie-break games to dispose of Wenjun Ju. Other survivors were Alisa Galliamova (Russia), Marie Sebag (France), Ekaterina Kovalevskaya (Russia), Viktorija Cmilyte (Lithuania), Yu Huaxu (China), Svetlana Matveeva (Russia), and Nino Khurtsidze (Georgia).

There were two decisive results in the main games of Round 4. Galliamova and Matveeva stay in the competition after defeating Khurtsidze and Sebag (2-0 and 1½-½) respectively, while the other two matches, Kovalevskaya/Xu and Chiburdanidze/Cmilyte, were drawn 1-1.

The final four:

Semi Final: Alisa Galliamova v. Viktorija Cmilyte Xu Yuhua v. Svetlana Matveeva

Final: Alisa Galliamova v. Xu Yuhua

And then there were two...

No games were given here since a major upgrade is planned for the Rooty Hill website and this will mean modifying the text of every game on the site—a very time-consuming process. Only local club games will be added until that upgrade has been completed.

                              —Report:   David Evans