Indian Grandmaster Dronavalli Harika scored a hard-fought victory over Meri Arabidze of Georgia to advance to the semifinals of the World Women Chess Championship here today.
Top rated Indian Koneru Humpy forced Mariya Muzychuk of Ukraine to the tiebreaker after winning the second game in the quarterfinals.
Harika won a close game with white pieces that was always within the boundaries of a draw. However, the Indian persisted in the drawn rook and pawns endgame and was rewarded post the fourth hour in the longest game of the quarterfinals thus far.
Humpy, on the other hand, was in a must win situation and she did not disappoint her fans by outclassing Mariya Muzychuk to force the match into the tiebreaker.
The two will first play two rapid games with 25 minutes each and should the deadlock continue, more games of shorter duration will be played to determine the winner.
The other two quarterfinal matches will also be decided in the tiebreaker in this USD 450000 championship.
Natalija Pogonina of Russia kept the local hopes alive pulling one back against Zhao Xue of China while Pia Cramling defended well to hold the other Muzychuk sister -- Anna -- to a back-to-back draw.
The Torre Attack as white has been a part of Harika's repertoire for some time and it again came to her aid against Arabidze. Although the Georgian did not have troubles securing a balanced position, the exchanges at regular intervals led to a rook endgame with a slightly fractured pawn structure.
