Hola darlings!
The
Moscow Open is back! (January 31 - February 10, 2013).
This year, a large contingent of female players from India are playing in Tournament A ("Men's") along with several other chess femmes. Altogether, 225 players are registered. Now, will all of them play to the end? Likely not.
Because of the size of this event and my sparse "spare" time (nonexistent these days!), I will only report the final standings, unless I happen to read of some incredible femme chess feat during this event.
The Top Ten of Tournament A features some heavy-hitters in the male world of chess, but this year the field has been denuded of several of the creme de la creme players participating in other tournaments or just taking a break. That being said, though, these top ten men are nothing to sneeze at and I doubt any of the chess femmes will be meeting any of
them OTB. Nope. This is the kind of tournament a lower-rated player enters in the hope of gaining (1) great experience and (2) ELO points if one can manage to beat up on a lower rated competitor. We'll see how the ladies do. They may mostly end up playing each other!
Here are the chess femmes playing in Tournament A (by rank order):
| 42 | GM | Harika Dronavalli | IND | 2514 |
| 106 | WGM | Gomes Mary Ann | IND | 2394 |
| 108 | IM | Karavade Eesha | IND | 2391 |
| 150 | IM | Mohota Nisha | IND | 2327 |
| 162 | WGM | Cherednichenko Svetlana | UKR | 2307 |
| 163 | WGM | Padmini Rout | IND | 2307 |
| 171 | WGM | Soumya Swaminathan | IND | 2291 |
| 197 | WIM | Abdulla Khayala | AZE | 2203 |
| 201 | WGM | Kiran Manisha Mohanty | IND | 2188 |
| 215 | | Michelle Catherina P | IND | 2105 |
| 217 | WFM | Pujari Rucha | IND | 2100 |
| 218 | WFM | Bharathi R. | IND | 2099 |
| 219 | WFM | Monnisha Gk | IND | 2055 |
Tournament B is the "Women's" event. This year, while I haven't checked to see what the prizes are for the chess femmes, I suspect that the prize fund has been greatly diminished, and the field of players therefore reflects this. There are not what I would call any top female chess "stars" participating in Tournament B. Here is the
list of participants by rating. Disappointing.
There are several other events as well, Veterans', Amateurs, Students' competitions, etc. If the next big star(s) emerge(s), I'm sure we'll read about it sooner or later at Chessbase :)
