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The Favourites are the WMSG Rapid Individual Winners |
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Wednesday, 08 October 2008 03:22 |
There were no big surprises in the 1st World Mind Sports Games Rapid Individual as favourites GM Antoaneta Stefanova of Bulgaria and GM Bu Xiangxi of China won the Womens and Mens Gold Medals respectively by defeating GM Zhao Yue of China (2-0) and GM Anton Korobov of Ukraine (1.5-0.5). While Stefanova had a comprehensive victory, Bu, with a billion Chinese waiting expectantly, showed nerves of steel to win a very tense first game and then calmly drew the second.
So Stefanova adds Gold to her Silver won earlier in the Individual Blitz Womens to become the leading performer of the games while China gets its first Gold medal and now has the most medals with one Gold, one Silver and two Bronze. However Ukraine with one Gold and two Silvers still leads the overall standings with Bulgaria third and Russia keeps fourth place thanks to GM Alexandra Kosteniuk's one Gold medal.
  
L-R: Zhao, Houska, Huang
Young China WGM Huang Qian took the Bronze medal from Britain's IM Jovanka Houska's Bronze medal without difficulty after dropping the first game (1-1, 1-0) and the same was achieved by the much more fancied Singaporean (and ex Chinese No. 1) GM Zhang Zhong who came back very strongly after also dropping the first game against Brazilian GM Alexandr Fier (1-1, 1-0).
Overall Medal Standings (after the Individual events):
1. China: 1 Gold, 1 Silver, 2 Bronze
2. Ukraine: 1 Gold, 2 Silver;
3. Bulgaria: 1 Gold, 1 Silver;
4. Russia: 1 Gold;
5-6. Greece, Singapore: 1 Bronze each.
As always, full coverage of the 1st World Mind Sports Games is at www.2008wmsg.org/en and all games are broadcast live and available for viewing and download daily at www.2008wmsg.fide.com.
We also like to thank and acknowledge the use of our coverage of the 1st World Minds Sports Games by our chess friends at www.chessbase.com and www.susanpolgar.blogspot.com.
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