Grandmaster Bhakti Kulkarni Lives Asian Chess Dream in South Korea

12th Women's World Champion Alexandra Kosteniuk's Chess Blog for Latest Chess News and Trivia (c) 2013

Hi everyone, 

A nice feature article on GM Bhakti Kulkarni from Goa, India. It is the only place in the country that still reflects the cultural influence of the Portuguese. The Portuguese landed in India in the early 16th century and Goa remained Portuguese overseas territory as late as 1961. Goa has a nice chess tradition. Read this feature by Marcus Mergulhao.

PANAJI: Woman Grandmaster Bhakti Kulkarni pinched herself hard and when it pained, she realized all of what she was witnessing was true. The mild-mannered Goan chess star had just realized her dream of winning a medal and as she shared the podium with Chinese duo of former world champion Hou Yifan (2595) and former World junior girls champion Zhao Xue (2565), she seemed like the odd one out.

After all, Bhakti's third place stopped former world woman champion Zhu Chen (2494) from making it an all Chinese podium finish at the Asian Indoor Games at Incheon in South Korea on Wednesday. "It was like a dream come true. It was too wonderful to be true," Bhakti said after her stupendous achievement.Just a day earlier, Bhakti had realized another of her dream when she was drawn to meet former world woman champion Hou Yifan (2595) of China. "I could feel the pressure when I was playing Hou Yifan. But I fought well to keep it level only to lose a pawn in time trouble," said Bhakti. Hou won the game on 48th move and finished as the eventual champion.

Once the championship was over, Bhakti could spend more time with the former world champion and gold medalist. "Hou Yifan knows English well and she was talking freely with me," said Bhakti.

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3rd Asian Indoor Games

The 3rd Asian Indoor Games have been held in Vietnam, from October 30th, 2009 to November 8th, 2009. Chess was one of the other 30 games represented in Vietnam and were presented with players from 19 countries.

The chess program consisted of the following 4 competitions: Team Blitz (Preliminary, Semi-Final, Final), Men Rapid (Preliminary, Semi-Final, Final), Women Rapid (Preliminary, Semi-Final, Final), Team Rapid (Preliminary, Semifinal, Final).

In the team blitz event, the team of Vietnam took the gold medals winning in the final match against the team of China.

In the team rapid event, China took their revenge, winning in the final match against the team of Vietnam. The women rapid was won by Hou Yifan who won the final match against Zhu Chen All the results and many photos can be found on the official organizers site.

Here is a nice example from the games of Hou Yifan from the 3rd Asian Indoor Games:

It's the position from the game between Hou Yifan and Alattar Ghayda, Black just played 24. ... Rad8, what is the best way for White to finish the game?

The full table of the medals won in the chess program can be found here and in the chart below:

That's great to see that in Asia chess now is part of the Indoor and Outdoor Olympic Games, I hope that in the near future we will see chess as a member of the Global Olympic family.

Posted by: Alexandra Kosteniuk

Women's World Chess Champion

www.chessblog.com