There will be 3 Chinese and 1 Indian in the semifinal. Here are the matchups:
Top draw
Ruan, Lufei CHN WGM 2480
Zhao, Xue CHN GM 2474
Bottom Draw
Hou, Yifan CHN GM 2591
Koneru, Humpy IND GM 2600
Prediction?
Chess Daily News from Susan Polgar
The WWC Semifinal is set
Harika choked in a winning position in game 1.
This is upsetting. It should be Koneru and Hou in the final.
There is no mercy in knock out system.
I am such a fan of Koneru that I truly believe she’ll become world champion. India will have a chess King and Queen!
Plus Koneru is a beautiful gal. She deserves to win it. 🙂
This is because Russia wants to protect Kosteniuk. They know that she’s much weaker than them and she won’t get lucky in 2 matches. This way they hoped that she would face only 1 of them again after they exhaust themselves playing each other.
Well, Lufei Ruan can win this… that would be interesting!
A Chinese final between Ruan and Hou is my guess!
chess is coming home, it’s coming home…it’s coming home….
Kenny G, what does beauty have to do with it? And on that scale she is rated 1950 at best.
Congrat to Lufei Ruan!
Did her advances in all rounds come in rapid games? Interestingly, she has already retired from the Chinese team and is currently a graduate student at Carnegie Mellon University.
Shameful performance by Kosteniuk. She’s the Nigel Short of chess now.
After getting eliminated by an amateur who gave up chess for university study, Kosteniuk once again disrespected Humpy, Hou Yifan, Zhao Xue, and the Ruan, the one who kicked her butt, by making this public statement: “…one thing is sure, I will stay your Chess Queen™, next year and the years after that…”
What a pompous statement. This once again shows that Kosteniuk is the most arrogant player. She has no respect for people who are way better than her.
The aesthetics of the game has much to do with beauty…
Having the pieces conducted by Koneru, the second highest rated (male GM) rated after the beautiful Judit Polgar has much to do with beauty…
On the highest stage of chess (world championship) for women’s chess has much beatuy to do with it…
I’m just not sure how I would have fared even facing the lowest rated player in that event.
On the hand, I think I’ll stick to medicine. Thank you very much.
Anonymous at 4:52:00,
Checked, it’s true that Ruan won all her games in tie-breakers, which means she’s the only player who has been playing non-stop, what stamina! Their semi might lack the quality in the Hou/Koneru game, but it’s still gonna be an interesting one.
Kenny G, I’m going for Hou 🙂
Sheesh! What an obnoxious statement by Kosteniuk. She has no shame promoting herself and booting her self inflated ego.