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Kosteniuk Beats Narva In Armageddon, Joins Gunina In Quarterfinals
Neither player can believe that Mai Narva has blundered her bishop on d4 in the deciding game.

Kosteniuk Beats Narva In Armageddon, Joins Gunina In Quarterfinals

Colin_McGourty
Colin_McGourty
| 14 | Chess Event Coverage

IM Mai Narva almost pulled off the sensation of knocking GM Alexandra Kosteniuk out of the 2024 Julius Baer Women's Speed Chess Championship, but there was heartbreak as she blundered a piece just as she was about to clinch victory in the armageddon decider.   

GM Valentina Gunina is also through after beating IM Divya Deshmukh by a five-point margin, though her Indian opponent kept fighting and preserved the tension until the final couple of games. 

The first Quarterfinals take place on Monday, September 2, with GM Hou Yifan vs. IM Polina Shuvalova starting at 8 a.m. ET / 14:00 CEST / 5:30 p.m. IST, followed by Kosteniuk vs. GM Vaishali Rameshbabu.

Julius Baer Women's Speed Chess Championship Bracket 

We now know all eight quarterfinalists after a final two action-packed Round-of-16 matches, with the first going right down to the wire.   

Alexandra Kosteniuk 9.5-8.5 Mai Narva

Former World Champion Kosteniuk was the clear favorite in this matchup, but 24-year-old Estonian Narva, who qualified via the Play-Ins, looked certain to snatch victory in armageddon... before disaster struck.

5+1: Kosteniuk 2-2 Narva

When Kosteniuk managed to win a rook endgame that she began a pawn down, it was easy to imagine she might dominate the match, but in the very next game Narva played brilliantly to leave her formidable opponent in zugzwang on a board full of pieces.

Narva could have taken the lead in the third game, where she was winning with the black pieces in a position where only underpromoting to a knight would suffice. Narva put a queen on the board instead, but Kosteniuk didn't exploit the chance to force a draw... until she got there in the end! 

The final five-minute game is another game where Narva had a crushing advantage, but this time she blundered a full rook and needed a helping hand to make another draw. The scores were level at 2-2 going into the three-minute games. 

3+1: Kosteniuk 3-2 Narva

Kosteniuk again won the first game of this section after a rollercoaster that could have gone either way.

The match was still too close to call, however, as White won all five games in this section. Since Kosteniuk won the final game with the white pieces, she took a narrow lead into the 15 minutes of 1+1 chess.

1+1: Kosteniuk 1.5-2.5 Narva

The sequence of white wins was stopped only when Narva allowed an accidental repetition of moves in a much better position in the first one-minute game. Kosteniuk did then win with White to take a two-point lead for the first time in the match, which set up an absolutely epic third game in this section. 

Narva built up a winning position, but Kosteniuk fought on and, after many swings, it was equal on move 92. A draw would leave Narva with no hopes of making up a two-point gap, so she had to fight on, and she did, eventually managing to win rook vs. knight on move 124! 

Let's look at a few of the late twists.

This had strong echoes of the penultimate one-minute game two days earlier, where IM Alice Lee managed to draw a game she was losing, denying overall victory to IM Sara Khadem. As with Lee, Narva still needed to win the final one-minute game on demand. If she did, it would be the first win for Black of the match... and she did! Kosteniuk looked understandably devastated at the turn of events.

That meant another four one-minute games would be played.

Tiebreaks: Kosteniuk 3-2 Narva 

Curiously, that last regular game was the start of a five-game winning sequence for Black. It didn't seem to matter how winning White was in some of the games.

Narva's second win on demand, this time in the last of the four normal tiebreak games, was brilliant, though for a brief moment Kosteniuk could have saved herself! 

That meant armageddon. After five wins in a row for the black pieces, you might have thought both players would want them (and needing only to draw) even more than usual—but no, Kosteniuk wanted White and decided to bid the full five minutes that the loser of the bid would get in any case! 

Narva could have won the bidding "war" with four minutes and 59 seconds, but instead she had four minutes and nine seconds for all her moves.

Narva needed only a draw but instead built up a completely winning position, and it looked certain that we were going to have the same scenario as with Lee the day before—a player who had never led for a moment of the match was about to clinch overall victory with an armageddon win.

Then disaster struck. Narva gave a check with her bishop from d4—either mouse-slipping while trying to play 36...Bxb2, or forgetting that the exchange of pieces on the previous move meant d4 was no longer a safe square. Kosteniuk gladly grabbed the piece and cruised to victory.

That meant Kosteniuk had won by the narrowest of margins, but there was no time for an interview as the next match was about to begin.  

Valentina Gunina 9.5-4.5 Divya Deshmukh

On paper the second match was a convincing win, with Gunina winning all three sections...

...but it was only near the very end that everything was clear. Gunina had avoided a repeat of the day's earlier clash! She said afterward: "I just wanted to have fun, and I saw this epic ending of Kosteniuk vs. Narva, and I didn’t want to play like this, to have a winning position and... oops!"

5+1: Gunina 2.5-1.5 Divya

The first game was a taste of the intense action that would follow with 18-year-old Divya, who will represent India at the upcoming FIDE Chess Olympiad in Budapest, getting her knight trapped. In fact, the game could still be saved, but Divya missed the way.

Divya shrugged that off to win smoothly in the next game and, after a draw in game three, was close to ending the five-minute section level until she missed a chance to swap off queens and lost the last game. 

3+1: Gunina 3-2 Divya

Gunina pounced on a blunder in the first three-minute game to take a two-point lead, and although Divya hit back, her opponent restored the two-point lead in the next game. By then winning the fourth game, Gunina opened up a three-point lead, though her match strategy could perhaps be questioned—she had 57 seconds at the end, and if she'd delayed mate for 10 seconds, the section would have been over.

Such pragmatism bordering on cynicism is perhaps not a Gunina specialty, and playing a final three-minute game didn't look a bad idea when she built up a completely winning position. She was heading for an almost decisive four-point lead... until she blundered away a rook and the game.

A two-point lead going into the bullet segment could easily disappear in the space of a few minutes, but instead this was where Gunina finally stamped her authority on the match.  

1+1: Gunina 4-1 Divya

Gunina kept up her record of winning the first game of all three sections, but then Divya also maintained her record of winning the second game of each section. On this occasion, Gunina's rush to swap off queens was flawed—can you see why? Black to play and win! 

That was the last moment to cheer for Indian fans, however, as Gunina won the next game to take a three-point lead with under five minutes to go—a mathematically almost hopeless situation.

An exhausted Gunina went on to win the final two games as well to post a 9.5-4.5 victory.

Gunina will now take on GM Kateryna Lagno while Kosteniuk faces Vaishali. 

The Quarterfinals start Monday! 

How to watch?

You can watch the broadcast on Twitch and YouTube. The games can also be checked out on our dedicated events page. 

The live broadcast was hosted by IM Jovanka Houska and WGM Jennifer Shahade.

The Julius Baer Women's Speed Chess Championship is a Chess.com event where some of the strongest female chess players in the world battle for a $75,000 prize fund. The main event sees 16 players compete in a single-elimination bracket in matches played at 5+1, 3+1, and 1+1 time controls. Four places go to the winners of four Play-ins held on August 12-16 and open to all female titled players. In each Play-in the top four players in a Swiss qualify to compete in a knockout. 

Previous coverage:

Colin_McGourty
Colin McGourty

Colin McGourty led news at Chess24 from its launch until it merged with Chess.com a decade later. An amateur player, he got into chess writing when he set up the website Chess in Translation after previously studying Slavic languages and literature in St. Andrews, Odesa, Oxford, and Krakow.

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