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Koneru Humpy, Aleksandra Kosteniuk, Hou Yifan, and Pia Cramling reached the Semi Finals of the World Women's Chess championships being held at Nalchik, Russia. They gifted themselves a rest day since none of them have to play the tie breaks. Humpy was the most convincing of the four as she crushed Yang Shen 2-0. Pia Cramling caused a mini upset. The remaining 4 are all over 2500 and the remaining matches are expected to be strong. Quarter final results: Kosteniuk vs Ushenina 1.5-.5 Humpy vs Shen 2-0 Yifan vs Mkrtchian 1.5-.5 Cramling vs Stefanova 1.5-.5

Vishy Anand lost his opening game against Teimour Radjabov at the Corus Chess tournament that started today. In a semi-slav game, Anand made a couple of serious mistakes in the middle game to lose an exchange. Ironically, he held his own in the opening when his king was exposed. Anand was not able to demonstrate his Houdini-like end game wizardry and resigned after a long struggle. Another mini-upset was the defeat of Topalov against Aronian. In a game of swinging fortunes, Aronian managed to stave off the many threats that Topalov produced at the early stages of the game. Topalov was clearly playing for a win and had to concede advantage. Aronian nursed home the advantage to a clear win in a Rook and pawn ending. Mamedyarov resigned in a dead drawn position with Carlsen. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Update : Hou Yifan lost her game to Bacrot as per the official site result. There was a lot of commotion on the chat but the king was ...

The Group C has some fresh new faces, none fresher than Caruana, who should already be a strong contender for the title. Negi did not have a great year last year, but what the heck when you are 15 and the world at your board ? Van der Weil will be interesting to watch here. Ushenina, Krush and Zhaoqin bring in the ladies charm and agression at the board. GM Group C GM Evgenij Miroshnichenko UKR 2651 GM Fabiano Caruana ITA 2594 GM Friso Nijboer NED 2559 IM Arik Braun GER 2541 GM Parimarjan Negi IND 2514 GM Dimitri Reinderman NED 2510 GM Efstratios Grivas GRE 2509 GM John van der Wiel NED 2496 WGM Anna Ushenina UKR 2486 GM Pontus Carlsson SWE 2481 WGM Irina Krush USA 2475 GM Zhaoqin Peng NED 2419 IM Mark van der Werf NED 2389 Dennis Ruijgrok NED 2330