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Victor Bolorunduro
Doha
With a score of 7.5 points after nine rounds of matches, former world champion Kosteniuk Alexandra of Russia shot to the top of the leaderboard of the women's category on Day 1 of the FIDE World Blitz Chess Championship at the Ali Bin Hamad Al Attiyah Arena in Doha on Thursday.
The Blitz Championships, which concludes on Friday, has a time control of 3min+2s. The event is a Swiss pairings tournament with twenty one rounds in open championship and seventeen rounds in women's championship, with a single game for each round.
The 32-year-old member of the gold medal-winning Russian team at the Women's Chess Olympiads of 2010, 2012 and 2014 is closely followed by China's Ju Wenjun on 7.0 while the newly crowned world rapid champion Muzychuk Anna of Ukraine, Russia's Lagno Kateryna and Harika Dronavalli of India are joint-third with 6.5 points.
All eyes are set on Muzychuk, the defending World Blitz champion, having obtained the title in Khanty-Mansiysk in 2014, to see if she can make it two-in-two in Doha.
After winning rapid in grand style on Wednesday where she led from start to finish, the Ukrainian grandmaster, who had also competed for Slovenia between 2004 and 2014, has an uphill task ahead of her in her bid to overturn the table against Kosteniuk, the first woman to win the men's Swiss Chess Championship in 2013.
Eight more rounds will be played on Friday before the champion emerges.
For the Open tournament, a titanic battle for the title is playing itself out between world champion Magnus Carlsen and his challenger at the World Chess Championship in November Sergey Karjakin of Russia.
The two grandmasters are joint leaders at the end of the first day with 10 points after 12 rounds of matches played.
They are 1.5 points clear of the next four players who are on their heels including the Russian duo of Daniil Dubov and Alexander Morozevich, Croatia's Marin Bosiocic and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave of France.
For the two joint leaders, Doha appears to be a perfect playground for the continuation of their rivalry on the board at the season-ending tournament.
When the two clashed last November at the Fulton Market Building in Lower Manhattan, New York, chess fans were held spellbound for nearly three weeks with title finally going to the Norwegian grandmaster Carlsen after 12 closely fought games and a day of high-speed tiebreakers leaving Karjakin to return home to Russia in noble defeat.
Having narrowly lost the rapid to Vassily Ivanchuk of Ukraine, who had a superior tie-break score despite having the same 11/15 finish as himself, the tournament favourite Carlsen will be hoping to consolidate on his lead as the tournament enters the final round on Friday.
Former champion Viswanathan Anand of India was in the 14th position with 7.5 points with nine rounds remaining.
Meanwhile, tournament director and Qatar Chess Association (QCA) Secretary-General Mohammed al Medhaiki has applauded the players for the high standard of play exhibited at the tournament.
"We are happy with the way things have gone so far. The World Rapid and Blitz Championships have lived up to its billings and the standards have been very high. We are hosting this tournament for the first time in the region and we hope to host more of such in the future," Medhaiki added.
The total prize fund for the Open tournament is $400,000 with $40,000 for the winner of each championship and $80,000 in Women Championships with $10,000 for the winner of each championship.
