Whereas 6 of the 8 women in the second round of draughts were ready
after some 4 hours, all men needed to come back to play tie breaks.
In the women tournament former world champion Zoja Golubeva won for
the second time and now leads the pack. The young Chinese player
Alatenghua saw her position become more difficult every move and was
without a chance. That Tkachenko won against Nogovitcyna may be seen
as a surprise. Tkachenko is a former world champion but in recent
tournament Nogovitcyna played very well and was close to winning the
world title this year. After 20 moves the position of Nogovitcyna was
already very difficult and with one piece more it was a piece of cake
for Tkachenko.
Dutch Nina Hoekman played all or nothing against the young Fedarovich
of Belarus. It came out to be nothing and Fedarovich is now in second
position. Motrichko first played a draw against current world champion
Tanssykuzhina from Ufa but lost in the rapid game: 9-3 for
Tanssykuzhina.
All men played a draw in the long game in the morning session and had
to come back at 5 PM for the tie breaks. World champion Georgiev was
the first to win: he played a very strong game against Germanski and
won in the end game: 9-3. Georgiev now leads with 21 points. In the
rapid games Dul from Mongolia gave Dutch Pim Meurs a cold shower: 9-3.
Misans won a piece in the middle game and that was too much for the
Chinese Zhou who is still playing a good tournament. The Chinese
increase in strength very rapidly!
Valneris the glorious winner of the first day needed a blitz game to
beat brave Silva from Brazil. Silva is still very young and will get
very far in draughts. All of this meant that two games needed to be
decided in the Georgiev-Lehmann barrage. The very talented Boomstra
needed two games to beat the champion of Africa Ndjofang: 7-5.
Amrilaev needed one games more to beat Shaibakov and that was not
without luck. What should have been a draw ended with an unfortunate
black-out of Shaibakov.
Today we look forward to the battle of the old world champions:
Golubjeva and Tkachenko.
Beijing December 2011
Harry Otten