De Canon IXUS 170 doet het nog goed! Nu ook de bijbehorende oplader en verbindingskabel gevonden, dus de upload van fotos gaat nu ook eenvoudiger.
Alles is dus klaar voor wat meer fotografische experimenten.
Nu nog even de Zegerplas:
Vandaag op pad geweest met een afgestofte Canon IXUS 170 om te kijken of ie nog behoorlijke foto’s maakt. Ik maakte er een paar, maar kreeg al snel de melding dat de batterij/accu het op ging geven. Deze kon nog net op de SD kaart gezet worden:
Nu ik sinds oktober rond de plas loop, heb ik het idee dat alle fotogenieke plekken wel door mij zijn vastgelegd. Maar het fotograferen heeft me in de greep gekregen en ik ben van plan er wat meer mee bezig te zijn. Ook op deze website…
Voordat de vijfde ronde van Tata Steel 2021 begint, toch maar even een half “Rondje Meer” gedaan. De wind blies zo ongeveer door je heen, maar de zon deed ook zijn best:
Ik volg het Tata Steel schaaktoernooi online, want er is dit jaar geen enkele andere manier vanwege de Corona (covid-19) situatie. Er is dit jaar (versie 83!) alleen een A groep, maar wel met de wereldkampioen Magnus Carlsen:
Een paar jaar terug speelde ik ook in Wijk aan Zee, in een van de amateurgroepen. Dat is waarom het Tata (en vroeger Hoogovens) schaaktoernooi “wereld” beroend is: naast de allergrootsten spelen ook amateurs van diverse pluimage en schaaksterkte in dezelfde grote zaal! Het zou mij niet verbazen als alle Nederlandse en ook sommige buitenlandse spelers die in de A groep gespeeld hebben, ooit in een van de amateurgroepen zijn begonnen, en toen verlangend uitkeken naar de topgroep letterlijk een paar tafels verder!
In het eerste artikel van de Amerikaanse “Declaration of Independence” beschreef Thomas Jefferson in 1776 de drie onontvreembare rechten van de mens: “Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness“. Die drie hebben geen juridische grond, maar zijn bedoeld als inspiratie en richtsnoer voor regeringen en presidenten.
Je kunt “pursuit of happiness” ook als een persoonlijk motto zien. En dan is “streven naar geluk“‘ geen gek idee. Maar hoe doe je dat? Het antwoord op die vraag wordt geclaimd door duizenden schrijvers in nog veel meer “self-help” boeken! Ik heb er ook een paar in mijn boekenkast staan.
Ik wil dat antwoord niet claimen, maar wel iets schrijven over wat mij geholpen heeft.
Allereerst zijn er twee “grondhoudingen” of “basisgewoontes” die mijn inziens absoluut noodzakelijk zijn vooraleer de zoektocht naar geluk te beginnen:
Een gewoonte die ik mezelf pas een paar jaar geleden heb aangeleerd, toen ik mij realiseerde dat op een gezellige avond de gedachte dat het glas halfvol was, een fijner gevoel gaf dan dat het halfleeg was.
Om geluk te vinden is het noodzakelijk om je een levenlang te blijven ontwikkelen.
In feite zijn dit “gewoon” gewoontes die je jezelf kunt aanleren. Daarvoor bestaat een 7 stappen plan:
Of moet ik schrijven “Wandelen in Albaniana” want zo werd Alphen genoemd in de Romeinse tijd.
Op internet kom ik veel info tegen over Albaniana:
Vandaag de Zegerplas helemaal rond gewandeld. Het hield me al een tijdje bezig: vanwaar de naam Zeger? Was het degene die de plas liet aanleggen? Was het een geliefde burgemeester van Alphen? Niets van dat alles: gisteren trof ik een oud krantenartikel dat de naamgeving uit de doeken deed. Het blijkt een Aarlanderveense legende te zijn (meer over Aarlanderveen hier onderaan).
De landheer van Aarlanderveen had een zoon, Zeger, die verliefd werd op Aleid, de dochter van de koopman. Deze relatie werd door zowel de landheer als de koopman afgekeurd, dus de geliefden besloten op een nacht hun geluk elders te gaan zoeken. Ze verdwaalden echter in de zompige moerassen rondom Aarlanderveen (het huidige Alphen, zie ook hieronder). Elkaar stevig omstrengeld werden ze de diepte van het moeras ingezogen en niemand heeft ooit nog iets van ze vernomen.
De plek waar ze het laatste gezien waren, werd een paar eeuwen later afgegraven. In de afgraving ontstond door regen en grondwater een grote plas die later gecultiveerd werd: de Zegerplas was een feit.
Aarlanderveen wordt voor het eerst vermeld als heerlijkheid op het verlovings-contract van Floris IV van Holland en Machteld van Brabant (13e eeuw). Het dorp komt door de eeuwen heen in het bezit van verschillende adellijke families, waaronder Van Oudshoorn en Van IJsselstein. Aan het begin van de Renaissance in 1584 of 1593 komt Aarlanderveen in het bezit van veldmaarschalk Ernst van Mansveld of Von Mandelsloh. Het helmteken van zijn familie was een snoerloze hoorn met daarboven een zilveren doodshoofd en twee gekruiste zwaarden. Dit helmteken werd het heerlijkheidswapen en later het gemeentewapen.
De gemeente met de naam Alphen aan den Rijn ontstond op 1 januari 1918 toen de gemeente Alphen werd samengevoegd met Aarlanderveen en Oudshoorn. Per 1 januari 2014, sinds de fusie met Boskoop en Rijnwoude, heeft de gemeente een oppervlakte van 132,50 km² en telt ze meer dan 100.000 inwoners, waarmee ze tot de dertig grootste gemeenten van Nederland behoort.
Binnen de gemeente bevinden zich de resten van twee Romeinse versterkingen, Albaniana (Alphen) en Nigrum Pullum (Zwammerdam).
Dat Alphen in de Romeinse tijd Albaniana heette en aan de noordelijke grens van het Romeinse rijk lag, was voor mij aanleiding om er wat meer over te lezen. De Rijn vormde die grens en is later door geschiedkundigen Limes gaan heten (Latijns voor grens of pad) en liep van Katwijk door naar Bonn, zie de afbeelding hieronder:
In my summary of female World Champions elsewhere on this site, I miss Judit Polgar: the strongest female chessplayer ever. She just refuses to become a female World Champion! I make up for this with a short bio:
Judit Polgar (born July 23, 1976) is a Hungarian chess player. Easily the best female chess player in history, in the April 2004 FIDE rating list (including men and women) she was ranked number nine in the world with an Elo rating of 2728.
Judit and her two older sisters (Zsuzsa (GM) and Zsofia (IM)) (from left to right in the picture below) were reportedly part of a educational experiment carried out by their father in an effort to prove that women could achieve high mental aptitude when trained from a very early age (see more below).
He set out to educate his daughters in many fields, not merely chess, but all three latched on to the game at a young age, and have achieved heights in chess few men ever achieve.
Judit could almost certainly have won the title of Women’s World Champion of Chess several times over. No other woman was even in the top 100 of the January 2004 FIDE rating list. However, she has refused to participate in women-only chess events, stating that she wants to be the true World Champion of Chess. Amongst her achievements are earning the men’s Grandmaster title at the then-record age of 15 years and 4 months, one month earlier than Bobby Fischer’s previous record.
Her climb up the ranks once seemed to put her on target for the world championship, but although she has played many winning games against some of the world’s best players, she has yet to win a major tournament. She has also been unable to beat former champion Garry Kasparov in any of their encounters in standard time control games. In 2002, she finally beat Kasparov in a rapid game of the “Russia vs The Rest of the World 2002” tournament.
In 2015 she retired from chess.
Educational psychologist László Polgár studied the biographies of 400 geniuses. From Socrates to Einstein, he researched them all. And now he was preparing for one of the most extreme experiments ever done—so extreme that people thought he was going crazy. A local government even told him to see a psychiatrist to “heal him of his delusions.” But Polgár was determined. He only needed a wife who was willing to jump on board.
He started corresponding with a number of young ladies, outlining the pedagogical project he had in mind. Klára, a foreign language teacher, was one of them. “Like many at the time, I thought he was crazy” Klára recalls, “but we agreed to meet.” When they were dating, Klára was charmed by him and got interested in his bold idea. They ended up marrying. And so the experiment began.
They named their first daughter Susan. And soon Sofia and Judit followed. László and Klára quit their jobs and devoted their lives to home schooling their 3 children. Polgár believed talent did not exist. Anyone could become a master in any field—the top 3 percent—if you applied the right kind of practice. “A genius is not born, but is educated and trained” Polgár tells The Washington Post. “When a child is born healthy, it is a potential genius.” Polgár had always been an advocate of the practice theory as opposed to the talent theory. He wrote papers on the subject and lobbied with government to change the education system. But nobody wanted to listen. “Children have extraordinary potential, and it’s up to society to unlock it,” Polgár says. “The problem is that people, for some reason, do not want to believe it. They seem to think that excellence is only open to others, not themselves.” It seems that people’s mindsets are programmed incorrectly.
As nobody wanted to listen to what he had to say, the only way was to prove it. He was going to raise his children to become geniuses. It took him a long time to pick a field to focus on. After his first daughter was born, he knew it was time to finally make a decision. “I needed Susan’s achievements to be so dramatic that nobody could question their authenticity,” he says. “That was the only way to convince people that their ideas about excellence were all wrong. And then it hit me: chess.” He decided to go for chess because the measurement was objective. “If my child had been trained as an artist or novelist, people could have argued about whether she was genuinely world-class or not. But chess has an objective rating based on performance, so there is no possible argument.” In other words, if he announced upfront that his children would be chess geniuses and was able to pull it off, his theory about mastery was proven.
Polgár, an amateur chess player himself, dived into the depths of the game and learned as much as possible about chess training. With the help of his wife, he turned their modest apartment in the heart of Budapest into a real chess temple. It had a library with thousands of chess books stuffed onto shelves on one wall, with another wall lined with sketches of chess scenes. A file card system took up an entire third wall. It included records of previous games and even an index of potential competitors’ tournament histories.
Once he felt sufficiently developed as a trainer, he started to introduce chess to each of his daughters. And while the children were also learning all the regular subjects and spoke several languages, chess was always at the core.
At age 4, Susan, the eldest of the Polgár sisters, won her first chess tournament, the Budapest Girls Under-11 Championship, with a 10-0 score. At age 12, she won the World Under-16 Girls Championship. At age 15, despite restrictions on her freedom to play in international tournaments, she became the top-rated female chess player in the world. At age 22, Susan was the first woman to earn the men’s Grandmaster title in the conventional way—the highest rank in chess. By the end of her career, she had won the World Championship for women on 4 occasions and 5 chess Olympiads. In December 2006, she married her long-time business manager and friend, Paul Truong. She now lives in the US where she runs a chess institute and coaches the Webster University chess team, the number 1 ranked team in the nation.
Sofia, the middle sister, won the gold medal at the under-11 Hungarian Championship for girls, the World Under-14 championship for girls, and numerous chess Olympiads and championships. But she is best known for the ‘Miracle in Rome’ where she won 8 straight games against many of the greatest male players. “The odds against such an occurrence must be billions to 1,” one chess expert wrote. It is still seen as one of the most extraordinary chess performances in history. She married fellow chess player Yona Kosashvili and moved to Israel. She now helps to run a chess website and is an acclaimed painter.
Judit, the Benjamin of the family, is considered the best female player of all time. At the age of 12, she was the youngest player ever to break into the Top 100 players’ rating list, ranking number 55. At the age of 15 years and 4 months, she became Grandmaster. At the time, she was the youngest to have done so, breaking the record previously held by former World Champion Bobby Fischer. She defeated 11 current or former world champions in either Rapid or Classical Chess, including Boris Spassky, Anatoly Karpov, and Garry Kasparov. She occupied the number 1 position (highest rated female) for 26 years until she retired in 2015. Today she lives with her husband and 2 children. She authored 2 children’s books on chess and is Head Coach of the Hungarian National Men’s Chess Team. She also founded the Judit Polgár Chess Foundation to bring chess as an educational tool to children in schools.
By publically declaring that his children would become geniuses even before they were born, Polgár took a huge gamble. He could be ridiculed and be the laughing stock of science by stating this upfront.
But even then, the talent myth was hard to kill. When his eldest daughter Susan won a local competition as a 4-year-old, the local newspaper called her a ‘genius.’ And father László remembers many occasions when he was congratulated by other parents for having such talented daughters.
Although Polgár was criticized by some for encouraging his daughters to focus so intensely on chess, the girls later said that they had enjoyed it all. “We spent a lot of hours on the chess board, but it did not seem like a chore because we loved it,” Susan recalls. Father Polgár, always careful not to push his daughters too hard, once found Sofia in the bathroom in the middle of the night, a chessboard balanced across her knees and said “Sophia, leave the pieces alone.” Her reply… “Daddy, they won’t leave me alone!” László Polgár ignited their interest and made them care about the game. They became passionate about chess.
Langs de Zegerplas ligt een begraafplaats. Een mooie plek voor eeuwige rust.
Als ik daar langs loop denk ik aan de spreuk “Memento Mori“, wat letterlijk vertaald betekent: “Gedenk te sterven“.
Ik denk eigenlijk dat het betekent: “Zorg dat je geleefd hebt!“. Dat sluit namelijk beter aan bij mijn levensmotto: “One life, live one!“.
Vandaag was het een grauwe dag en toch veel wandelaars rondom de Zegerplas. Op het moment dat Rutte het aftreden van zijn kabinet (Rutte III) ging toelichten, liep ik langs het grote Chinese restaurant dat zo’n mooie plek heeft gevonden aan de plas. Helaas is het al bijna een jaar volledig uitgestorven…
Ik was onvoldoende geinspireerd om een nieuwe foto te maken, dus vis ik er eentje uit mijn archief op:
Waarom weet ik niet maar het weer, het Chinese restaurant en de nagenoeg rimpelloze plas deed me denken aan een haiku van de Japanse meester op dit gebied, Matsuo Basho (1644 – 1694):
Oh, oude vijver,
een kikker springt van de kant,
geluid van water.
Een haiku is een kort, niet-rijmend gedicht. De basis van een haiku is de zintuiglijke ervaring van de dichter en bestaat uit drie regels van 5, 7 en 5 lettergrepen. De haiku is een van oorsprong Japanse dichtvorm.
Below I list the female chess worldchampions.
1. 1927-1944 Vera Francevna Menchik (1906-1944) from Czechoslovakia/England.
Born in Moscow, daughter of a Czech father and an English mother. At the age of nine she learned chess and as a teenager moved with her family to London, where she took chess lessons from Geza Maroczy (Hungarian, 1870-1951), at the time one of the top-10 players in the world. Vera Menchik was easily the strongest female player of her time, having at one time or other beaten most of the strongest players in the world (the defeated became members of the “Vera Menchik Club“). In 1927 she won the first Women’s World Championship tournament with a score of 10.5 out of 11. She defended her title with ease in Hamburg 1930, Prague 1931, Folkestone 1933, Warsaw 1935, Stockholm 1937 and Buenos Aires 1939. Menchik met a tragic death in June 1944. She was killed with her mother and chess-playing sister during one of the last German air attacks on London.
2. 1944-1950 There was no champion(ship)
3. 1950-1953 Liudmila Rudenko (1904-1986) from the Soviet Union.
Ludmila Rudenko from Byelorussian started her career by winning the women’s champion of Moscow in 1928. She went on to win the Women’s World Championship tournament in 1949, with a score of 11.5 out of 15. She held the title until 1953.
4. 1953-1956 Elizaveta Bykova (1913-1989) from the Soviet Union.
Elizaveta Bykova was coincidentally born in a town called Bogolyubovo in Russia. In 1938 she became women’s champion of Moscow, which she subsequently won a number of times. She was first the USSR Championships of 1947, 1948 and 1950. The first Candidates Tournament for women was held at Moscow in 1952. Elizaveta Bikova won the event (+11-3=1), one point ahead of 2nd/3rd places, earning the right to face Rudenko in the first modern Women’s World Championship match. Behind by one point in the last game, Rudenko needed a win to retain the title. She fought hard, but lost. Elizaveta Bikova thus beat Rudenko (+7-5=2) to become the second women’s World Champion.
5. 1956-1958 Olga Rubtsova (1909-1994) from the Soviet Union.
At 17 Olga won the first USSR Women’s Championship. That was in 1927. After that she won a great number of tournaments, including the USSR Women’s Championships of 1931, 1937 and 1949 and the Moscow Championships of 1953 and 1954. The second Candidates Tournament, Moscow 1955, was won by Rubtsova (+13-2=4), one-half point ahead of 2nd place. FIDE decided that the World Championship would be a triangular match of the three strongest players in the world. Olga Rubtsova won at Moscow in 1956, one-half point ahead of Bikova who finished five points of Rudenko.
6. 1958-1962 Elizaveta Bykova (1913-1989) from the Soviet Union.
With no intervening Candidates event, Bikova regained the title at Moscow in 1958, beating Rubtsova (+7-4=3). She accomplished the first successful defense of the title by beating Kira Zvorikina, winner of the Candidates Tournament, with a score of +6-2=5 at Moscow in 1959. In that same year she also won an International Tournament in Amsterdam.
7. 1962-1978 Nona Gaprindashvili (1941- ) from the Soviet Union.
She was born in Tbilisi, Georgia, and was the greatest female player of her generation. She won the fourth Candidates Tournament, Vrnjacka Banja 1961, (+10-0=6) two points ahead of 2nd place. Gaprindashvili crushed Bikova (+7-0=4) in the title match, Moscow 1962, to become the fourth Women’s World Champion. Gaprindashvili defended her title against Alla Kushnir of Russia in matches at Riga 1965 (+7-3=3), Tbilisi/Moscow 1969 (+7-2=5), and Riga 1972 (+5-4=7). Her last successful title defense (+8-3=1) was against her compatriot Nana Alexandria of Georgia at Pitsounda/Tbilisi 1975. Gaprindashvili played in men’s tournaments, winning amongst others Hastings 1963/64 and and tied for first at Lone Pine 1977. In 1978 she came second and earned a full male GM title.
8. 1978-1991 Maia Chiburdanidze (1961- ) from the Soviet Union.
The Georgian was one of the first women chess prodigies, becoming the youngest WIM in the history of the game (in 1974 at the age of 13). The 1976-78 cycle saw two Interzonals at Roosendaal and Tbilisi. Chiburdanidze finished second at Tbilisi behind Elena Fatalibekova, the daughter of Olga Rubtsova, third World Champion. Fatalibekova was eliminated in a semifinal Candidates match by Kushnir, but Chiburdanidze beat Alexandria (+3-2=5), Elena Akhmilovskaya (+4-3=5), and Kushnir (+4-3=7) to earn the right to challenge Gaprindashvili. When 17-year old Maia Chiburdanidze beat Gaprindashvili (+4-2=9) at Tbilisi in 1978, the torch passed from one generation of Georgian women champions to the next. She defended her title against Alexandria at Borsomi/Tbilisi 1981 (+4-4=8), Irina Levitina at Volgograd 1984 (+5-2=6), Akhmilovskaya at Sofia 1986 (+4-1=9), and Nana Ioseliani at Telavi 1988 (+3-2=11).
9. 1991-1996 Xie Jun (1970- ) from China.
Xie Jun became junior Xiangqi (Chinese chess) champion of Beijing at the age of six. She was later persuaded to take up chess. The Georgian domination of women’s international chess ended abruptly at Manila 1991, when the young Chinese star Xie Jun beat Chiburdanidze (+4-2=9). She had earned the right to be challenger by finishing second behind Gaprindashvili at the 1990 Interzonal in Kuala Lumpur, tying with Alisa Maric at the Candidates Tournament, Borzomi 1990, then beating Maric (+3-1=3) in a tiebreak match.
10. 1996-1999 Susan Polgar (1969- ) from Hungary.
The oldest of the famous Polgar sisters initially refused to play in women’s tournaments, becoming a male grandmaster in 1991 at the age of 23. In 1993 she decided to play for the women’s world championship, but did not win the title after a 12-12 draw against Nana Ioseliani. The next cycle was all Susan Polgar’s. After tying with Chiburdanidze in the Candidates Tournament, Tilburg 1994, she beat the ex-World Champion in the final match (+4-0=3), St. Petersburg 1995. She went on to beat Xie Jun (+6-2=5) at Jaen 1996, giving the Polgar family its first World Champion. Susan has also won the Women’s World Chess Champion titles in rapid and blitz chess (both in 1992).
11. 1999-2001 Xie Jun (1970- ) from China.
In the summer of 1994 Xie Jun was awarded the full Grandmaster title. The final match in the Women’s Championship was scheduled to be played in Shenyang, after sponsors from China made the best offer for the prize fund. Galliamova refused to play the entire match in China and the win was awarded by default to Xie Jun. The title match would be Polgar – Xie Jun II. By the time FIDE announced the date and venue for the title match, Polgar had given birth to her first child. She considered that the time to recover from childbirth and to prepare for the new match was insufficient. She requested that the match be postponed, FIDE refused, and negotiations broke down. After the contract deadline passed, FIDE declared that the title match would be played between Xie Jun and Galliamova. The forfeited Candidates match was to be resurrected as a title match! The 1999 match, with a venue split between Kazan and Shenyang, was won by Xie Jun (+5-3=7). A year later, at New Delhi 2000, Xie Jun defended her title by winning the first Women’s Championship played with the knockout format. She beat her compatriot Qin Kanying (+1-0=3) in the final match of the six round event. Xie Jun is one of three women to have at least two separate reigns, besides Elisaveta Bykova and Hou Yifan. Xie Jun is the current president of the Chinese Chess Association.
12. 2001-2004 Zhu Chen (1976- ) from China.
The Chinese player Zhu Chen became Women’s World Champion in the FIDE knock-out event in Moscow 2001, beating Russian Alexandra Kosteniuk in the process.
13. 2004-2006 Antoaneta Stefanova (1979- ) from Bulgaria.
This top Bulgarian female player won the title in the FIDE knock-out championship (June 5th 2004) in Elista, Kalmykia, defeating Russian WGM Ekaterina Kovalevskaya in the final. In this world championship Zhu failed to defend her title due to pregnancy and attached scheduling problems.
14. 2006-2008 Xu Yuhua (1976- ) from China.
She won the title in the FIDE knock-out championship (March 25th 2006) in Ekaterinburg, Russia, defeating Russian IM Alisa Galimova in the final. The knockout event had 64 participants, with both former world champion Zhu Chen and reigning world champion Antoaneta Stefanova. Xu Yuhua was 3 months pregnant at the time…
15. 2008-2010 Alexandra Kosteniuk (1984- ) from Russia.
She won the title in the FIDE knock-out championship (September 18th 2008) in Nalchik, in the Kabardino-Balkaria region of Russia. 64 players were eligible to play in the knock-out event, which had a prize fund of US $450,000. Due to the tensions in the region the Georgian players and a few others decided not to participate. Kosteniuk defeated the 14-year-old Chinese wondergirl Hou Yifan in the final.
16. 2010-2012 Hou Yifan (1994- ) from China.
She won the title in the FIDE knock-out championship (December 24th 2010) in Hatay, Turkey. It was a 64-player knockout tournament, with two-game mini-matches qualifying a player to the next round, until the final and 6th round, which was a four-game match to determine the champion. Hou Yifan defeated compatriot Lufei Ruan in the tie-break games of the final to become the youngest World Champion.
17. 2012-2013 Anna Ushenina (1985- ) from Ukrania.
She won the title in the FIDE knock-out championship (November 2012) in Khanty Mansiysk, Russia. It was a 64-player knockout tournament, with two-game mini-matches qualifying a player to the next round, until the final and 6th round, which was a four-game match to determine the champion. Anna Ushenina defeated ex World Champion Antoaneta Stefanova in the tie-break games of the final to become the 14th World Champion.
18. 2013-2015 Hou Yifan (1994- ) from China.
As the winner of the FIDE Women’s Grand Prix 2011-2012, Hou won the right to challenge Anna Ushenina in a 10 game match for the world title. Scheduled from September 10 to the 27th, the Women’s World Chess Championship 2013 was played in Taizhou, Jiangsu, China. She won the match in 7 games with a 5.5-1.5 score (+4 =3, TPR 2730) regaining her championship title.
19. 2015-2016 Mariya Olegivna Muzychuk (1992- ) from Ukrania.
She won the title in the FIDE knock-out championship (April 2015) in Sochi, Russia, after defeating Natalia Pogonina (Russia) 2,5-1,5 in the final match. She was expected to defend her title against Hou Yifan in the Women’s World Chess Championship (match) later in 2015.
20. 2016-2017 Hou Yifan (1994- ) from China.
In 2010, she became the youngest Women’s World Chess Champion in history by winning the 2010 Women’s World Championship in Hatay, Turkey at age 16. In the Women’s World Chess Championship 2012 she was eliminated early, but she regained the title in 2013, defeating Anna Ushenina. She then lost the world title by not playing in the 2015 Championship for scheduling reasons. Hou then defeated former world champion Mariya Muzychuk in the 2016 World Championship match to regain the title. The scheduled 10-game match was held from 1 to 14 March 2016 in Lviv, Ukraine. Hou Yifan won convincingly, not losing a single game.
21. 2017-2018 Tan Zhongyi (1991- ) from China.
In the final match of the World Championship in Tehran Tan Zhongyi defeated Anna Muzychuk on tie-break with 1,5-0,5. The championshio was a 64-player knock-out tournament. The final tie-break of the Women’s World Chess Championship took place in the Espinas Palace Hotel in Tehran March 3. Four previous games with classical time control finished with 2:2 score. Some top female players had decided not to attend the tournament. Hou Yifan, the outgoing women’s world champion and top ranked female player, decided not to enter the tournament because of dissatisfaction with FIDE’s Women’s World Championship system. The 2015 Women’s World Champion, Mariya Muzychuk, and US Women’s Champion Nazi Paikidze also elected not to attend, out of protest at the tournament’s location in Iran, where it is mandatory for women to wear a hijab in public. Other notable absentees were women’s world number 4 Humpy Koneru and 7-time US Women’s Champion Irina Krush.
22. 2018-xxxx Ju Wenjun (1991- ) from China.
In February 2016, Ju Wenjun won the Tehran leg of the FIDE Women’s Grand Prix 2015–16. By also winning the last tournament of the Grand Prix in Khanty-Mansiysk, Russia, she finished first in the overall standings and earned the challenger spot in the Women’s World Chess Championship Match 2018, which she won. Several months later, in the Women’s World Chess Championship Tournament of November 2018, Ju defended the women’s world chess champion title. In December 2017, Ju won the Women’s World Rapid Chess Championship in Riyadh, and won in the same championship held in St. Petersburg in December 2018, scoring 11½/15 (+8=7) and 10/12 (+8=4), respectively. In January 2020, Ju successfully defended the women’s world chess champion title against Aleksandra Goryachkina in the Women’s World Chess Championship 2020. She won with the score of 2.5–1.5 in the tiebreaker after having equalized the regular matches 6–6.
