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 ...

2011 was the 35th of its kind. It was organised by

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 ...

and was played in a match format between the defending champion and a challenger, determined via the

FIDE Grand Prix The FIDE Grand Prix is a biennial series of chess tournaments, organized by FIDE and its commercial partner Agon. Each series consist of three to six chess tournaments, which form part of the qualification cycle for the World Chess Championship or ...

series. On 8 August 2011 the match was awarded to

Tirana Tirana ( , ; aln, Tirona) is the capital and largest city of Albania. It is located in the centre of the country, enclosed by mountains and hills with Dajti rising to the east and a slight valley to the northwest overlooking the Adriatic Sea ...

Albania Albania ( ; sq, Shqipëri or ), or , also or . officially the Republic of Albania ( sq, Republika e Shqipërisë), is a country in Southeastern Europe. It is located on the Adriatic and Ionian Seas within the Mediterranean Sea and shares ...

. The prize fund was $200,000. The match took place from 13 to 30 November 2011. Champion

Hou Yifan Hou Yifan ( ; born 27 February 1994) is a Chinese chess grandmaster, four-time Women's World Chess Champion and the second highest rated female player of all time.

retained her title, defeating challenger

Koneru Humpy Koneru Humpy (born 31 March 1987) is an Indian chess player best known for winning the FIDE Women's rapid chess championship in 2019. In 2002, she became the youngest woman ever to achieve the title of Grandmaster (GM) at the age of 15 years ...

by 5½ - 2½.

Match format

Women's World Chess Championship Tirana 2011

The match was scheduled to be played over 10 games with classical

time control A time control is a mechanism in the tournament play of almost all two-player board games so that each round of the match can finish in a timely way and the tournament can proceed. Time controls are typically enforced by means of a game cloc ...

s: 90 minutes for first 40 moves with added 30 minutes for the rest of the game and a 30-second increment per move starting from the first move. Koneru Humpy played White in the first game. Colours then alternated, except after game 4. The two players were ranked second and third in the world at the time, behind only

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 yo ...

. Should the match have been tied after ten games, tie-breaks would have kicked in. Those were: *Up to four rapid games (25 minutes per player with a 10-second increment from the first move) *two rapid games (5 minutes per player with a 3-second increment from the first move) *One armageddon game that Black only needs to draw to win the match (5 minutes for White and 4 minutes for Black with a 3-second increment from move 61)

Match stats

: After eight out of ten games the match was decided, by Hou Yifan

drawing Drawing is a form of visual art in which an artist uses instruments to mark paper or other two-dimensional surface. Drawing instruments include graphite pencils, pen and ink, various kinds of paints, inked brushes, colored pencils, crayons, ...

with Black and reaching 5½ points.

Head-to-head record

Prior to the match, Hou Yifan and Koneru Humpy had played 16 games against each other at classical

with the following statistics:http://www.chessgames.com/perl/ezsearch.pl?search=yifan-koneru

References

External links

Official websiteRegulations for the Women's World Championship Match 2011Match in FIDE calendar
{{Women's World Chess Championships Women's World Chess Championships 2011 in chess 2011 in Albania 2011 in women's sport