Chess Classic Mainz Update
The chess festival in Mainz is well underway with many interesting events taking place, as prevously reported here.
The Women's Chess 960 Rapid World Championship featured Alexandra Kosteniuk (pictured), Victorija Cmilyte, Kateryna Lahno and Natalia Zhukova. Chess 960 is the most popular of the many chess variants and playing it well - especially in rapid games - is a real challenge even for the best players.
The players first played a double round-robin tournament and the top two scorers would go on to contest a final 4-game match.
Kosteniuk soon proved herself adept at the unusual positions found in Chess960, only conceding one draw through the tournament round.
| Kosteniuk | Lahno | Cmilyte | Zhukova | TOTAL | |
| Kosteniuk | X | 1 1 | 0.5 1 | 1 1 | 5.5 |
| Lahno | 0 0 | X | 1 1 | 1 1 | 4.0 |
| Cmilyte | 0.5 0 | 0 0 | X | 1 0.5 | 2.0 |
| Zhukova | 0 0 | 0 0 | 0 0.5 | X | 0.5 |
The final between Kosteniuk and Lahno went down to a final game, which Kosteniuk won to take the title.
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | Total | |
| Kosteniuk | 1 | 0 | 0.5 | 1 | 2.5 |
| Lahno | 0 | 1 | 0.5 | 0 | 1.5 |
Here is the start of the first game of the Kosteniuk-Lahno match.
At the end of these opening moves we have a position where the players can 'castle' by the Chess960 laws, so we then reach the position in the next diagram.
