The

Women's World Chess Championship The Women's World Chess Championship (WWCC) is played to determine the world champion in women's chess. Like the World Chess Championship, it is administered by FIDE. Unlike with most sports recognized by the International Olympic Committee, wher ...

2006 took place from March 10–27, 2006 in

Ekaterinburg Yekaterinburg ( ; rus, Екатеринбург, p=jɪkətʲɪrʲɪnˈburk), alternatively romanized as Ekaterinburg and formerly known as Sverdlovsk ( rus, Свердло́вск, , svʲɪrˈdlofsk, 1924–1991), is a city and the administrat ...

, Russia. For the fourth time, the championship took the form of a 64-player knock-out tournament. The tournament was won by

Xu Yuhua Xu Yuhua (born 29 October 1976) is a Chinese chess Grandmaster (chess), grandmaster and former Women's World Chess Championship, Women's World Champion (2006–2008). She was China's third women's world chess champion after Xie Jun and Zhu Che ...

, who beat

Alisa Galliamova Alisa Mikhailovna Galliamova (russian: Алиса Михайловна Галлямова, tt-Cyrl, Алисә Михаил кызы Галләмова; born 18 January 1972 in Kazan) is a Russian chess player who holds the FIDE titles of Inte ...

in the final by 2½ to ½. Notably, Xu Yuhua was three months pregnant at the time.

Participants

The players were seeded by their

FIDE The International Chess Federation or World Chess Federation, commonly referred to by its French acronym FIDE ( Fédération Internationale des Échecs), is an international organization based in Switzerland that connects the various national c ...

Elo rating The Elo rating system is a method for calculating the relative skill levels of players in zero-sum games such as chess. It is named after its creator Arpad Elo, a Hungarian-American physics professor. The Elo system was invented as an improved ch ...

s of January 2006,FIDE January 2006 Top 50 Women
/ref> except that defending champion

Antoaneta Stefanova Antoaneta Stefanova ( bg, Антоанета Стефанова; born 19 April 1979) is a Bulgarian chess grandmaster and Women's World Champion from 2004 to 2006. She has represented Bulgaria in the Chess Olympiad in 2000 and the Women's Chess ...

was the no. 1 seed. Only two players from the top 20 were absent:

Judit Polgár Judit Polgár (born 23 July 1976) is a Hungarian chess grandmaster, generally considered the strongest female chess player of all time. In 1991, Polgár achieved the title of Grandmaster at the age of 15 years and 4 months, at the time the you ...

(ranked the no. 1 woman in the world – and 14th overall) who instead took part in the open championship events of

2005 File:2005 Events Collage V2.png, From top left, clockwise: Hurricane Katrina in the Gulf of Mexico; the Funeral of Pope John Paul II is held in Vatican City; "Me at the zoo", the first video ever to be uploaded to YouTube; Eris was discovered in ...

and

2007 File:2007 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: Steve Jobs unveils Apple's first iPhone; TAM Airlines Flight 3054 overruns a runway and crashes into a gas station, killing almost 200 people; Former Pakistani Prime Minister of Pakistan, Pr ...

, as well as

Hoang Thanh Trang Hoàng Thanh Trang (born 25 April 1980) is a Vietnamese-born Hungarian chess grandmaster. She was Asian women's champion in 2000 and European women's champion in 2013. Hoang competed in the Women's World Chess Championship in 2000, 2001, 2004, ...

(ranked 11th).

Qualification paths

*WC: Women's World Champion, runner-up and semifinalists of

Women's World Chess Championship 2004 The Women's World Chess Championship 2004 took place from May 21 to June 4, 2004 in Elista, Russia. It was won by Antoaneta Stefanova, who beat Ekaterina Kovalevskaya in the final by 2½ to ½. For the third time, the championship took the form o ...

(4) *J04 and J05: World Junior Champions 2004 and 2005 *R: Rating (average of all published ratings from July 2004 to January 2005 was used) (5) *E04 and E05: European Individual Championships 2004 and 2005 (29) *AM: American Continental Chess Championship 2005 (3) *AS:

Asian Chess Championship The Asian Chess Championship is a chess tournament open to all players from Asian chess federations ( FIDE zones from 3.1 to 3.7). It's held with the Swiss system and consists in two divisions, Open and Women's, the latter of which is reserved to f ...

2004 (3) *AF:

African Chess Championship The first African Chess Championship was played in 1998. Ibrahim Hasan Labib and Mohamed Tissir both shared first place with 7/10, but the former took the title. The 2007 championship was the FIDE Zone 4 qualifier for the Chess World Cup 2007, th ...

2005 (2) * Z2.1, Z2.2, Z2.3, Z2.4, Z2.5, Z3.1, Z3.2, Z3.3, Z3.4, Z3.5 (4), Z3.6, Z4.1: Zonal tournaments *PN:

President nominee

Results

Final match

A fourth game was not played because Xu Yuhua led by two points after game three. :

Bracket

References

External links

ChessBase reports
{{Women's World Chess Championships 2006 in chess Women's World Chess Championships Chess in Russia 2006 in Russian sport