Going into round 8, GM Wesley So is paired against IM SANIKIDZE Tornike who has a rating of 2486 while NM Haridas Pascua is paired against a higher rated opponent, IM ARUN Prasad Subramanian with 2492 rating.
Wesley is ranked on 10th spot after 7 rounds while Haridas is on 51st. The 13 round tournament takes break today and tomorrow and resumes round 8 games on August 10 at 3in the afternoon.
This will provide all our junior players to rest and enjoy watching the 2008 Beijing Olympics which opened yesterday. The four hour opening ceremony was one of the best the quadrennial games ever had! Beautiful!
In the girls division, IM Harika Dronavali leads with a score of 6 points followed on second spot by MUZYCHUK Mariya of Ukraine and NIKOLOVA Adriana of Bulgaria both with 5.5 points.
I was surprised to see a female player in the boys division, WGM HOU Yifan of China... why is that? Something is wrong here. Gender equality issues? Then boys can also join in their division right? It shouldn't be a one way street. Hay hay hay!
It is not a gender issue. The boys' division is actually an "open" division where players from any of the sexes (male, female, otherwise) can participate. The girls' division is restricted to girls.
ReplyDeleteJust like in the olympiad, where women can play in the open division (Judit Polgar for Hungary, Stefanova for Bulgaria, etc) while only members of the fairer sex can play in the women's olympiad. I remember writing back in 2000 that the Hungarian teams had the most beautiful women, and this includes their men's team!
Having said that, I should also note that men's (or open) tournaments usually have larger prizes than the women's. For the Delhi World Championships, for example, the prize fund for the open division was US $5 Million, while for the women's division it was US $500,000.
bobby ang