English Chess Forum

She was level with Harikrishna on 5.5/8 at the start of this morning's final round, but the Indian has just blundered badly and lost to Bacrot, while Hou, still in play, has a clear edge, though not yet definitely winning, against the local master Georgiadis. Comp evaluation is +0.86 and Georgiadis has 18 moves to make in 10 minutes.

Seems at worst that Hou should tie on 6/9 with Bacrot and Morozevich ahead of Leko, Harikrishna, Navara and Ponomariov and she has serious chances for 6.5, an outright win and a career-best performance.

It's a long way from 1 g4 in the final round at Gibraltar.......

Impressive. What was Judit Polgar's best performance in an equivalent event?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judit_Polg%C3%A1r

Polgar: "She has won or shared first in the chess tournaments of Hastings 1993, Madrid 1994, León 1996, U.S. Open 1998, Hoogeveen 1999, Sigeman & Co 2000, Japfa 2000, and the Najdorf Memorial 2000."

EDIT: Hou Yifan's done it! Congratulations on an excellent result.

Winning this tournament as seventh seed is impressive, but is it that strong a tournament? There were two IMs taking part, so not an all-GM supertournament. There were 'only' three GMs rated over 2700. Does anyone know what 'category' it was, if that sort of thing is still calculated? TPR for Hou Yifan of 2810.

EDIT: Average ELO of 2646. Hence category XVI (16).

[for comparison, current Sinquefield Cup is average ELO of 2788 and Category XXII (22)]

Christopher Kreuzer wrote:TPR for Hou Yifan of 2810.

That's good enough for me but you're right, this is far from the Linares style supertournament that Judit never managed to win.

Just played through the Harikrishna game. Looks like he's not an early morning player.

Superb achievement for Hou even if it wasn't the ultimate supertournament. Sad to see Vaganyan so outclassed, though.