Tirana: Victory continues to elude grandmaster Koneru Humpy who had to settle for her fourth draw out of five games against defending champion Yifan Hou of China at the half way stage of the Women's World Chess Championship here.
With one loss and four draws in the 10-game contest, the Indian continues to trail Yifan by a full point at 2-3. But Humpy will have the advantage of playing white in the sixth game and overall the Indian will have three white games out of the next five.
In case of a tied result, games of shorter duration will be played to determine the winner in this 200000 Euros prize money championship. The fifth game showed that Humpy's preparation has been quite up to the task. In effect, in all the games so far, the Indian has had a reasonable opening and looked the better prepared player but Humpy's loss in the third game seems to have landed her in trouble.
Humpy employed the Ruy Lopez open once again and Yifan was the first to deviate from the fourth game on her 12th turn. According to the Chinese, she was in her preparation till move 16 after which Humpy already had a tenable position.
"White did not manage to get any advantage today," noted Yifan at the post-game press-conference. The game was equal. My 12th move is a normal continuation, and I played by my home preparation until around the 16th move," she said. Humpy accepted that she did not expect Yifan to play like the way she did.
"I did not expect her to play the variation with queen exchange, but I just kept on playing normally. I think we did not play anything new in this line," said Humpy, who is here with her father. As it happened in the game, Humpy lost a pawn but entered an endgame which was practically equal and the peace was signed in 43 moves vide repatition.
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