Women's Speed Chess Championship: Lagno Beats Gunina
In a very close round of 16 match in the FIDE Chess.com Women's Speed Chess Championship, reigning women's world blitz champion GM Kateryna Lagno defeated GM Valentina Gunina 11.5-10.5. The next match is on Wednesday, June 16, between GM Alexandra Kosteniuk and GM Harika Dronavalli.
The live broadcast of the match.
After IM Bibisara Assaubayeva had eliminated GM Humpy Koneru with quite a wide margin on Saturday, the next match was much more equal and very exciting as well. Lagno took the lead with a narrow 4.5-3.5 score in the five-minute games, but after the three-minute segment, it was equal again.
Some wild tactics happened in game five of the match:
"I didn't like that she equalized before the last stage because, to be honest, I'm not a specialist of one-minute games," smiled Lagno, after the match was over. "During the whole match, she was playing very fast."
This match has swung wide open!!!
— Chess.com (@chesscom) June 13, 2021
After a missed perpetual, GM Gunina is back within striking distance entering the bullet 🤯
Anything could happen-- You don't want to miss this ➡️ https://t.co/kaTA3dnByP pic.twitter.com/hoNngrPXvU
The bullet segment was a nail-biting affair with one player taking the lead and then the other. Not a single draw was played there. In the end, it was Lagno, when the score was still even, who won the last game as Black. Gunina could have resigned earlier to give herself another chance to come back, but she was so focused that she let the match clock run out in a dead-lost position.
"It was fun. When you play with Valentina, you expect some kind of fight in every game," said Lagno. She will now play the winner of the match GM Nana Dzagnidze vs. GM Irina Krush. Gunina takes home $1,000 for finishing 9th-16th.
All games
The FIDE Chess.com 2021 Women's Speed Chess Championship is an online competition for titled female players. The qualifiers for the event were held May 28-June 6, while the main event runs June 10-July 3. Players battle for their shares of a total prize fund of $66,000.
Previous report:
Peter Doggers joined a chess club a month before turning 15 and still plays for it. He used to be an active tournament player and holds two IM norms. Peter has a Master of Arts degree in Dutch Language & Literature. He briefly worked at New in Chess, then as a Dutch teacher and then in a project for improving safety and security in Amsterdam schools. Between 2007 and 2013 Peter was running ChessVibes, a major source for chess news and videos acquired by Chess.com in October 2013. As our Director News & Events, Peter writes many of our news reports. In the summer of 2022, The Guardian’s Leonard Barden described him as “widely regarded as the world’s best chess journalist.”
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