FIDE Women's Grand Prix - Doha

It's over!  And the winner is ---- KONERU HUMPY of India.

WOOOO WOOOO!  I am very happy for Humpy.  Now she will  have to get over her yips when playing Hou Yifan and beat that girl's butt! (SEE earlier post below).

See Koneru ties for first with Danielian in Doha and qualifies for World Title Match , Mark Crowther - Saturday 5th March 2011, for further details (among many sites reporting).

Danielian went for the easy draw with Stefanova and (as Mark Crowthers had suggested yesterday), thereby guaranteed herself a share of first place. Sebag, who was at 7.0, battled hard for a win, but could not pull one out against Munguntuul Batkhuyag (a formidable player who has not had much exposure in chess press).  That left the door open for Humpy, who HAD to score a win against GM Zhu Chen, a former Women's World Chess Championship, who was in crappy form for this event, in order to top out on points over Nana Dzagnidze in the overall Women's GP standings.  If I understand this correctly (still not sure I do), if GM Sebag had won her game and therefore tied for first place with Danielian and Koneru (sorry, I keep calling her Humpy, her first name), Koneru would have lost out on overall Grand Prix points against Nana Dzagnidze.

Good news for Humpy - but not an easy game.  Nonetheless, Humpy proved her mettle over the last half of the tournament and I give her whoop-whoop arm pumps for doing so.  Goddess, how exhausting this must have been!

Here is a table showing the overall Women's GP points for this cycle with Doha's points added --? -- not sure what to call this table, since there is no guarantee another Women's Grand Prix cycle will ever take place: