The

Women's World Chess Championship The Women's World Chess Championship is a chess match played to determine the Women's World Chess Champion. It has been administered by FIDE since its inception in 1927, unlike the absolute World Chess Championship, which only came under FIDE's ...

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 ( , ), is an international organization based in Switzerland that connects the various national chess federations and acts as the Spor ...

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 consists of three to six chess tournaments, which used to form part of the qualification cycle for the World Chess Champio ...

series. On 8 August 2011 the match was awarded to

Tirana Tirana ( , ; ) is the capital and List of cities and towns in Albania, 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 ov ...

Albania Albania ( ; or ), officially the Republic of Albania (), is a country in Southeast Europe. It is located in the Balkans, on the Adriatic Sea, Adriatic and Ionian Seas within the Mediterranean Sea, and shares land borders with Montenegro to ...

. 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 (chess), grandmaster, three-time Women's World Chess Champion and professor at Peking University. She is the second highest Elo rating system, rated female player of all time.

retained her title, defeating challenger

Koneru Humpy Koneru Humpy (born 31 March 1987) is an Indian chess grandmaster. Humpy is a runner-up of the Women's World Chess Championship and the reigning two-time Women's World Rapid Chess Champion. In 2002, she became the youngest female player--and ...

by 5½ - 2½.

Match format

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. For turn-based games such as chess, shogi or go, time cont ...

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 Grandmaster (chess), chess grandmaster, widely regarded as the Strong (chess), strongest female chess player of all time. In 1991, Polgár achieved the title of Grandmaster at the age of 15 years ...

. 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 "Armageddon Game" is the 33rd episode of the American science fiction television series '' Star Trek: Deep Space Nine''. It is the 13th episode of the second season. Set in the 24th century, the series follows the adventures on Deep Space N ...

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 Visual arts, visual art that uses an instrument to mark paper or another two-dimensional surface, or a digital representation of such. Traditionally, the instruments used to make a drawing include pencils, crayons, and ink pens, some ...

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:

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