New Delhi: Seventeen-year-old Hou Yifan retained the women's World chess title after completing a 5.5-2.5 dismissal of challenger K. Humpy following the 29-move draw in the eighth clash of their 10-game match in Tirana, Albania, on Thursday.
In one of the most one-sided title-matches in the history of women's chess, Yifan won three games and drew five times without ever looking seriously stretched by the higher ranked Indian.
The title-triumph, with two games to spare, gave Yifan €120,000 while Humpy received €80,000, the biggest cheque of her career.
Yifan, who became the youngest ever World champion last year, has now become the youngest to successfully defend it, too. After scoring an anticipated victory in the seventh game, which lasted 97 moves, Yifan needed just a draw in the remaining three games to keep the title. On Thursday, playing black, the Chinese once again opted the Rogozin variation of Queen's Gambit Declined that had fetched her victories in the third and sixth games.
The Hindu