2013 Women’s World Championship (Taizhou, China)

FIDE Women’s World Chess Championship starts on 10th of September 2013. The event has been traveling under the radar and has not been highly-touted in the shadows of the upcoming World Championship match. This match will feature reigning World Champion Anna Ushenina of the Ukraine and former champion Hou Yifan of China. Ushenina won the World Championship (knockout format) event last year to become the women’s champion.

2010 Women World Chess Championship (Anna Ushenina vs. Hou Yifan)
Player	ELO	Nation	Flag	Player	ELO	Nation	Flag
Ushenina	2500	UKR		Hou	2609	CHN

While many are befuddled at the strange women’s cycle, the head-to-head match appears to be on format that has stood the test of time. The seemingly reserved Ushenina has not been very visible as a world champion, but performed well in the recent World Chess Cup in Tromsø, Norway defeating Peter Svidler before losing on tiebreaks. Ushenina-Hou will be a 10-game match starting tomorrow on September 10th with the drawing of the colors.

According to the main site,

The drawing of colours will be conducted during the opening ceremony which will take place at 3 p.m. on 10th of October in the Taizhou Hotel, and the colours reversed after game four (the player getting the white colour in game one plays game five with the black pieces). The time control is: 90 minutes for the first 40 moves, followed by 30 minutes for the rest of the game, with an increment of 30 seconds per move starting from move one.

The winner of the ten-game match is the first player to reach at least 5.5 points. For tiebreaking purposes, there are four rapid games (25’+10″), two blitz games (5’+3″), another two blitz games (5’+3″) and an Armegeddon game (black having draw odds). The winner will get 60% of the 200,000 euro purse and the loser 40%. If the winner is decided by tiebreak game the ratio is 55:45. The two have played several times with Hou Yifan holding a slight edge. Despite being the challenger, she is an overwhelming favorite to reclaim the title.