Bodnaruk Wins Play-In 4 Despite Great Fightbacks By Ismayil
IM Anastasia Bodnaruk emerged as the winner of the fourth and final Play-In tournament for the 2024 Julius Baer Women's Speed Chess Championship in what turned out to be the most exciting and memorable of all the qualifiers. Bodnaruk defeated Azerbaijani WFM Malak Ismayil in an armageddon tiebreak.
Ismayil had earlier made a brilliant comeback and upstaged Indian WGM Priyanka Nutakki, the winner of the Swiss with 8.5/11, in the Semifinals. That was also in armageddon, which she reached despite facing near-certain defeat when 0-3 down. Bodnaruk defeated Vietnamese IM Le Thao Nguyen Pham 3.5-1.5 in the other Semifinal.
With all the participants now confirmed, the main event starts on Thursday, August 22.
Julius Baer Women's Speed Chess Championship Play-In 4: Knockout
Julius Baer Women's Speed Chess Championship Play-In 4: Swiss
Play-In 4: Swiss
Initial rounds did not seem to produce the excitement of a blitz tournament in this fourth edition of the qualifier. The common oversights, mouse-slips, and the accompanying heartbreaks were definitely missing. Either the players had developed the necessary expertise to save themselves from such mishaps, or the actual blitz specialists joined the event only on Friday, for the final chance to qualify for the main event.
We still had some curiosities to devour, though not as high on the excitement scale as in the previous three events. WFM Mariam Avestisyan vs WIM Inna Agrest reached the following position after 59 moves.
...and went on to end in a draw after 109 moves, when the game ended automatically after the completion of the mandatory 50 moves.
It was in the final bend of the race that Nutakki was in the thick of the action, with three exciting games to the finish. In her eighth-round game against WFM Veronika Shubenkova, with both players having less than five seconds on their clock, Nutakki caught her opponent in one of the most common tricks on the chessboard: a knight fork.
Commentator FM James Canty went on a verbal sizzle after the end of the game: "That hurts, bro! Knock over everything in front of you! Punch the computer in front of you! Break a mouse, or two! Oh my goodness! That hurts, boys and girls! That hurts."
Knock over everything in front of you! Punch the computer in front of you! Break a mouse, or two! Oh my goodness! That hurts, boys and girls! That hurts.
—James Canty
In the 10th and penultimate round too, it was a breathtaking escape for Nutakki. When the crucial sequence happened around the 43rd move, White had two seconds on her clock to Black's six. Both players executed their moves at breathtaking speed, spending less than a second on their clocks for their further moves.
Bodnaruk and Pham played steadily throughout the event to enter the Knockout for the second time in the qualifier series. Ismayil staved off a challenge from the nine-year-old prodigy English WFM Bodhana Sivanandan in the final round to score the crucial victory needed to qualify for the Knockout. For Bodhana, this was the second loss in the final round in as many days, as she played on a top board and eyed qualification to the knockout stage with a victory.
In an equal-looking position, Ismayil found the crucial 17...f6! and after 18.Qf1? e5 19.Bh2 Qxa2, went on to win the game smoothly, smothering White's dark-squared bishop, which almost never came out of its cage on the kingside.
Play-In 4: Knockout
Semifinals: Nutakki 3.5-1.5 Ismayil
Nutakki impressed with steady play at the start of the semifinals, racing to a 3-0 lead. Her very first game of the match was a real entertainer, starting with a nice tactical shot.
After winning her next two games too, Nutakki seemed almost through to the finals with a huge 3-0 lead and needing just a draw to win the match. In the last game of the 3+1 segment, she even had an extra pawn and looked ready to wrap things up, when she lost focus and started drifting toward an inferior position.
Nutakki further lost both the 1+1 bullet games, and the match moved on to Armageddon tiebreak, with the following rules.
Ismayil outbid three minutes against Nutakki's four minutes and 21 seconds and chose to play with the black pieces. What followed was a fantastically tense encounter, with so many twists and turns.
Feeling the pressure of the need to win with the white pieces, Nutakki erred with 21.e5? here, enabling Black to win a pawn with 21...c5! 22.Qe2 Bxf3 followed by capturing the d4-pawn. Black had a winning advantage; White was staring at defeat.
Eager to bring her knight into the action, Ismayil erred twice with 31...Nd7? 32.Qd3 g6? and after 33.h5, White got her counterplay. The position became dynamically equal.
Black's position is still fine, but Ismayil blundered with 36...Qe7?? allowing 37.Qxg6+ and a winning advantage, even though she had more than a minute on her clock. We got to see Ismayil mildly tapping herself on the head out of frustration at this point.
White has an overwhelming position, and a minute and 51 seconds on her clock, to her opponent's six seconds. She just needs to advance her pawns on the kingside to win the game. And this is when tragedy struck, as Nutakki inexplicably played 56.Kf3??, losing her bishop to the knight fork 56...Nd4.
An apt comment from the YouTube commentary chat ran on the screen: "A tragedy in three parts."
But the point was, Black was still not winning here, as it was obvious that she would find it difficult to win the game with only around five seconds remaining on the clock.
At this point, Ismayil only had 0.8 seconds on her clock. With a minute and 46 seconds on her clock, Nutakki could have won the game with any other king move, as Black would have lost on time instantly. Instead, she played 66.Ke4 and Ismayil instantly played 66...Nc6 and the system got auto-stopped, with the game ending in a draw due to three-fold repetition. Black's clock showed as remaining with 0.1 seconds, and thus Ismayil drew with the bare minimum of time and progressed to the Final.
A screen capture of the moment showed the commentators in shock, and Nutakki in disappointment.
The WSCC Play-In Armageddon is cursed!
— Women's Chess Cove (@OnTheQueenside) August 16, 2024
Malak Ismayil advances to the Play-In KO final with a draw by repetition!
She was 0.1 second away from flagging! 🤯
There's no increment, so her opponent could have won with any other move! 🫠https://t.co/aE3jDTxwgV#chess #womeninchess pic.twitter.com/OktDwBVqFz
Commentator IM Jovanka Houska remarked on Ismayil's near miraculous win: "Someone must have been smiling on Malak!"
Someone must have been smiling on Malak!
—Jovanka Houska
Canty commented, "This game is crazy—lots of swings and turns and twists and who-knows and what-is-going-ons!"
This game is crazy—lots of swings and turns and twists and who-knows and what-is-going-ons!
—James Canty
Semifinals: Bodnaruk 3.5-1.5 Pham
This was a hard-fought match too, and the score stood 2.5-1.5 in favor of Bodnaruk at the end of the fourth game. The fifth game proved to be crucial.
Finals: Bodnaruk 4-3 Ismayil
Another match full of twists and turns, which also went down to the wire, ending in an armageddon tiebreak.
With scores tied at 1.5-1.5 after the third game, the fourth game with the time control of 3+1 blitz ended dramatically.
Black has an extra piece and should be able to win, but she had just a second remaining on her clock, and she blundered with 49...Kh7?? and resigned immediately after 50.Nf6+, forking the black king and the black rook.
In the fifth game with the time control of 1+1 bullet, with the position near equal, Ismayil seemed to freeze on screen, losing her internet connection, and hence she lost on time. The score now stood at 2.5-2.5.
The sixth and final bullet game looked to be winning for Bodnaruk, as she held an advantage of two extra pawns in a rook endgame, but the game ended in a draw.
Thus, there appeared the latest and final armageddon of the day. This time too, Ismayil bid aggressively with two minutes and 30 seconds, against Bodnaruk's four minutes, and once again she chose to defend with the black pieces.
It was a long drawn-out and tense encounter, and the position remained equal well into a knight endgame. But it ended with huge drama in the final five moves.
An emotional ending for Anastasia Bodnaruk, who qualifies for the Julius Baer #SpeedChess Championship main event! pic.twitter.com/H0VNEWld1F
— chess24 (@chess24com) August 16, 2024
How to watch?
You can watch the broadcast on Twitch and YouTube. The games can also be checked out on our dedicated events page.
The live broadcast was hosted by IM Jovanka Houska and FM James Canty.
The Julius Baer Women's Speed Chess Championship is a Chess.com event where some of the strongest female chess players in the world battle for a $75,000 prize fund. The main event sees 16 players compete in a single-elimination bracket in matches played at 5+1, 3+1, and 1+1 time controls. Four places go to the winners of four Play-ins held on August 12-16 and open to all female titled players. In each Play-in the top four players in a Swiss qualify to compete in a knockout.
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