Elina Danielian remains in the lead after five rounds. Playing with white pieces against Xu Yuhua , she scored her fifth victory in a row. Pia Crampling gained her first full point in the game against Nana Dzagnidze. Four other games were finished with a draw result: two of them ended relatively quickly possibly in anticipation of the coming free day.
ElinaDanielianis leading with 1.5 points ahead of Martha Fierro and Marie Sebag. Playing with Black, she managed to develop dangerous attack and won against Nana Dzagnidze.
MaiaChiburdanidze,XuYuhua andMarieSebag were stronger in their games against LilitMkrtchian, BatkhuyagMunguntuul and ZhuChen accordingly.
Humpy Koneru drew against Antoaneta Stefanova. PiaCramling made her fourth draw against Martha Fierro.
Anastasiya Karlovich: Tell a little bit about the way the tournament goes? What is your current position in Grand Prix cycle? Elina Danielian: Well, I don’t have any chances for the first place in overall series of Grand Prix. But for me it’s also important to perform good here because it’s the last event of the current Grand Prix series and of course it gives positive emotions when you play in a nice way and try to fight for prizes. For me it is very important to show good style and play nice games. I can’t complain about my current situation. Maybe I was lucky a little bit but after first rounds passed I feel that I can calculate, I can fight, my mind works and that is the most important for me right now.
Elina Danielian became the sole leader after beating Batkhuyag Munguntuul in a complicated and exciting struggle. Martha Fierro won today against Nana Dzagnidze. All former World Champions, participating in the tournament, met today on the board: Maia Chiburdanidze and Zhu Chen scored their first victories in the games against Xu Yuhua and Antoaneta Stefanova accordingly. Two other games Sebag-Mkrtchian and Cramling-Koneru were drawn today but after the nerve-wracking struggle.
After the second round there are two chess players with absolute result: Nana Dzagnidze and Elina Danielian were stronger in their games against Munguntuul Batkhuyag and Maia Chiburdanidze accordingly. Marie Sebag created the strong attack on her opponent’s king and won an impressive game against Xu Yuhua.
As it happened in the first round, the only one game was drawn today between Zhu ChenandPia Cramling. After the games participants came to the press centre and answered to the journalist’s questions.
