Nurgyul Salimova continues to be among the leaders even after the second day of the World Fast Chess Championship for men and women in Samarkand (Uzbekistan).
Three rounds before the end, she has an asset of 6 points, and shares 4-10th place. Salimova, who was the leader after the first four games with the maximum four points, recorded two wins against Hanim Balazhaeva (Azerbaijan) and Zarina Nurgalieva (Kazakhstan) and two losses against Zhu Jiner (China) and Anastasia Bodnaryuk (Russia). In the ninth round tomorrow, the 20-year-old Bulgarian will meet Russian Alexandra Goryachkina, against whom she played in the World Cup final earlier this year.
Grandmaster Antoaneta Stefanova, who today scored 2.5 points and with a total of 5.5 takes 15th place, also has a chance for a prize ranking. The other two Bulgarians, Nadia Toncheva and Gergana Peycheva, have assets of 5 and 4 points, respectively. Among the women, Anastasia Bodnaryuk leads the way, who is the only one with 7 points.
For men, after nine rounds, Grandmaster Cheparinov splits the places from fourth to 16th with an asset of 6.5 points - only half behind the three leaders Magnus Carlsen (Norway), Vladimir Fedoseev (Slovenia) and Yu Yani (China), who have 7 points. After Cheparinov recorded 4.5 out of 5 possible points on the first day of the tournament, he continued without a loss in today's tournament. The Bulgarian made four consecutive draws, which is impressive as all four opponents - Maxim Vachier-Lagrave (France), Daniil Dubov (Russia), Teymur Rajabov (Azerbaijan) and Vidit Santosh (India) are in the top 18 of the starting list. There are four rounds left in the men's tournament.
The men's tournament prize pool is $350,000, while the women's is $150,000. /BGNES
