At Reykjavik, Lu Miaoyi advanced to the 2400 international master level, and in St. Louis, Alice Lee defeated US No. 1 Irina Krush.
This column stated in November 2022 that Lu Miaoyi, a 12-year-old Chinese girl who was then unknown, may become one of the three greatest female chess players in history, along with Judit Polgar and Hou Yifan. Though it has taken some time, the proof is growing.
Xu Yuanyuan, Lu’s mother, won two global titles for girls and was the 2003 Chinese women’s champion. Lu began playing chess at the age of three. At the age of ten, she was at master level, with a Fide rating of 2200. At 12, she won in a masterful 18-move sacrifice miniature against Lilit Mkrtchian, the third-ranked lady in Armenia.
in competitions last month around her 14th birthday. With a rating of over 2400, Lu was getting closer to winning the open IM title. At Reykjavik last week, she went undefeated through the first eight rounds, defeating popular streamer Zachary Saine in 11 moves, drawing with former world No. 2 Vasyl Ivanchuk, and then dominating England No. 9 Daniel Fernandez with an attacking style reminiscent of Mikhail Tal.
Lu lost her first grandmaster norm in round nine of her lone loss at Reykjavik. Her next goal is to obtain the GM title, which Hou and Polgar attained at 14 and 15 years, respectively. A record there isn’t a given because Lu’s progress was slowed down after her rating crossed 2400 because the K-factor, or multiplier, used to determine it decreased from 40 to 10.
Alice Lee, 14, was making US chess history in the $150,000 (£119,000) Women’s American Cup in St. Louis, while Lu was crushing masters in Reykjavik. Irina Krush, the longstanding US women’s No. 1 seed, defeated Lee in both the 2022 and 2023 finals, and it looked like she would lose again this year, but Lee battled back.
Their quick and traditional mini-matches ended in a draw, and the decisive 3+2 blitz proved to be crucial. After 27 Bb5?? Nf3+, Krush had an extra bishop, but he lost the opportunity to take 30… Rf7! 31 Rxd4 Rxf2+! 32 Kxf2 Qf6+ when checks take up the white rook, winning for Black, but instead made a mistake and lost. $40.000 was awarded as the first prize.
Lu and Lee will now rank fourth and sixth, respectively, among the 2400+ women in chess history; the only women older than them are Polgar, Hou, and Kateryna Lagno, who is a contender for the world crown next month. The stage may be set for a titanic rivalry between the two athletes, a female version of the legendary bouts that Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky had in the 1960s and early 1970s before their 1972 world championship showdown.They played a legendary game at the Siegen Olympiad in 1970.
The Olympiad may be a good analogy because Lu is probably going to be a member of China’s team for the 2024 women’s competition in Budapest in September, and Lee is guaranteed a spot on the US team following her incredible performance last week. The US will compete for silver or bronze, while China will be the gold medal favorites.
In addition, Lee and Lu will lead the way in the upcoming ten years while budding talents like England’s nine-year-old Bodhana Sivanandan, who has been shattering age records, will elevate the reputation of international women’s chess.
This week, Sivanandan participated in the Vera Menchik Memorial at the London MindSports Centre in Hammersmith. This was the inaugural tournament supported by the Department of Culture, Media, and Sport’s new £500,000 elite chess sponsorship. It was staged in honor of the first female world champion, who reigned for 17 years until meeting an unfortunate end in 1944 when a V1 rocket struck her home in Clapham.
The Menchik Memorial was won by England’s 46-year-old former world champion Harriet Hunt, who just resumed her chess career after a few years away from academia. She finished half a point ahead of a trio that also featured 55-year-old Ketevan Arakhamia-Grant of Scotland. In their greatest games, the former world-class team demonstrated their enduring skills.
Sivanandan’s 3/9 record—six draws and three losses—was not as good as she could have played, but she was coming off of an incredible 5.5/9 in Reykjavik. She was playing for two rounds and ten hours a day because most of her games went the whole distance. Her result was tarnished by small margins. She made two easy victories by advancing quickly in her specialty of rook endgames, but her defeats were the result of playing passively from the start.
Sivanandan’s next tournament is the European Women’s Championship, which takes place in Rhodes, Greece, from April 19–29. England is sending a sizable delegation, led by British champion Lan Yao and commentator Jovanka Houska, to Rhodes, Greece, with support from the DCMS once again.
This week saw the 4NCL GM Round Robin at Peterborough, another English standard tournament supported by DCMS. Marcus Harvey, 28, Matthew Wadsworth, 23, and Shreyas Royal, 15, attempted to achieve the GM norm of 6.5/9. With a score of six, Harvey came the closest and was only stopped when he drew in the last round. Royal scored four, and Wadsworth five.
An English-based 6.5 GM norm was still in place. With on-demand wins in the last two rounds, Rajat Makkar, who represents France but is in his fifth year at Hampton School, Middlesex, where he takes his GCSE examinations this summer, battled his way to the norm.
Before he leaves Hampton, Makkar hopes to hold the position of general manager, and this week’s performance was a major step in that direction. He and Wadsworth played a fun game that ended with a king hunt and checkmate.
Magnus Carlsen, the world number one, lost the first round of the ongoing Grenke Classic to Richard Rapport by a knight and a game. In addition to pawns unrelated to the approach, the position included BK h6, BR c2, and BN c4 against WK f1, WR d3, and WB c5. Carlsen resigned because of Rxd2 3 Be3+ and 4 Bxd2, even though it was easily drawn. He fell for the fork 1… Nd2+??.
The world number one has had a challenging few days. Carlsen also made a knightly error when he lost a one-minute bullet game on Chess.com’s weekly Bullet Brawl to 10-year-old Faustino Oro.With a 3000 rating in online blitz and the youngest-ever 2300 rating and IM norm across the board, the Argentine chess prodigy, dubbed “The Messi of Chess,” is indeed a phenomenon.
3813It’s 1 Ng7+ for mate in five! Bxg7 2 g4+! Kh4 3 Qg3 mate or fxg4 3 Qh2 mate, then Kxg4 = 3 Bd1 + Bf3 + 4 Bxf3 + Kh4 5 Qg3 mate.