2008 U.S. Women's Chess Championship

Prior pertinent post. Hola! It's been a busy day; I spent several hours this afternoon and this evening working on pages at Chess Femme News that will cover the FKB U.S. Women's Chess Championship. Since I have not been able to find anything else in online searches, I assume that the pages at Monroi will be the only "official" website for the Women's Championship for 2008. I have nothing against Monroi, but I have to say that at this point, what Monroi has put together is disappointing after the excellent website that was presented for the 2007 U.S. Women's Championship. Monroi is a large commercial website that provides coverage on MANY events, and whatever they are being paid (? I cannot say for certain that they are being paid anything, but I assume they are receiving some payment for their services), they are not concentating all of their resources on a website for the U.S. WOMEN'S CHAMPIONSHIP. It would be unreasonable to expect them to do so when they are covering so many other events. It may be that more content (and I assume, lots of photos) will be added as the Championships progress. On a separate matter, today while I was putting together comprehensive pages that will cover the 2008 FKB U.S. Women's Chess Championship at Chess Femme News (I hope to finish the initial pages and have them online tomorrow), I discovered that I did not have the complete roster or results for the Qualifer event held in March published here. Several chess femmes participated in that event along with dozens of chess hommes, and here are their final standings: Final Standings of Female Participants in 2008 U.S. Chess Championships Qualifier (104 players, male and female):

31 WFM Zenyuk NY 2205 2215 L2 W70 W72 L10 W37 L25 W71 4.0 41 WFM Airapetian WA 2143 2160 L21 W81 W35 W23 L16 =51 L29 3.5 46 WFM Zorigt MGL 2219 2213 W95 L16 =48 W47 L56 W76 L30 3.5 48 WFM Hana Itkis N J 2084 2104 L14 W65 =46 =49 =50 L29 W76 3.5 58 Courtney Jamison TX 2064 2072 H-- H-- =97 L60 W92 W73 L26 3.5 64 Jennifer Acon CA 1972 1987 W29 =24 L25 L36 H-- L47 W93 3.0 78 WIM Mokryak UKR 2175 2161 L16 W95 =55 L56 W87 L52 L44 2.5 92 Julie O’Neill TX 1800 1807 H-- W57 L33 L58 =79 L66 2.0 94 WIM Alexey Root TX 2001 1985 H-- L26 L49 W88 H-- L71 L74 2.0

Sunday Night Blues

Hola darlings. It's Sunday night and in little more than half an hour the first part of a new production of Jane Austen's "Sense and Sensibility" will be shown on my local PBS station. I'm looking forward to it immensely, but I have to agree with the review in my local newspaper this morning who said that it would take something very special to top the Ang Lee 1995 theatrical release film. I put in my VHS tape probably once a quarter and watch it all over again, it is that good! Anyway, I have now finished my column for Chessville for April and sent it off to the editor for review. The hard work is done again for another month. It's amazing how long it takes to put the column together every month. It's not as if I have to dig up the news from scratch - I don't! I've already reported on it for the most part - here and at Chess Femme News (although I am terribly delinquent there now, I've been putting in too much time here at the blog). So I just do a lot of copying and pasting. Still - this column took nearly 2 full days of work. Last month's column took even longer. What the heck takes so long? Well, I do extensive fact checking to make sure I've got it right (and even with that, when I've gone back and looked at the columns I see a few errors, not to mention typos!) And it seems to take forever to hunt down what I deem suitable photographs of the chess femmes I'm writing about. I consider each and every one of these chess playing women beautiful, absolutely beautiful, and I try to find photographs that reflect that beauty in a physical sense. Now I'm facing having to go back to the office tomorrow. Yech yech. I am at the point in my life where I truly resent the time I have to spend making a living in order to be able to do this - blogging, for instance - and the time I don't have to spend on research into my true vocation, which is pursuing the origins of chess. But I suppose I should not complain, as it seems the majority of people around the world today do not have a passion in their lives, unlike me and my partners and cohorts at Goddesschess. It is that passion that adds the spice of variety to my busy and complicated life. But I'm blue tonight, darlings. Blue blue blue. So I'll no doubt shed many a tear while watching "Sense and Sensibility" - thank goddess I don't have any chocolate in the house - I'd probably eat myself into a coma! And the rains are coming too. We're supposed to get up to 2 inches starting later tonight and all day tomorrow. With the rains come the floods. Argggghh! This has been one hell of a winter. A few things before calling it a night: Chessbase has posted an article about the recently-concluded 2008 Scandinavian Ladies Open. At the Kolkata Open, GM Koneru Humy defeated her fellow countryman GM Dibyendu Barua with white pieces, moving her into a tie for first place with 7 other players with 5.5 points! Alexy Root, who is playing at the 2008 U.S. Open Qualifier, is trying for one of the wild card spots at the upcoming Frank K. Berry U.S. Women's Chess Championship to be held in May. She's blogging for the USCF website. Here's an entry.