MARCH 17 — China’s Hou Yifan won the Women’s World Chess Championship for the third time when victory in the ninth game of her 10-game match with Mariya Muzychuk took her score to six points from three wins and six draws.

Yifan, 22, was a heavy favourite, having been the top ranked female player for a while now, and enjoyed a 2-0 personal score against the one-year older Ukrainian. More importantly, she held a 100 point rating advantage. 

It ultimately came down to class and Muzychuk did not really have a chance despite the match being held in her hometown of Lviv, Ukraine and having the support of the top players and coaches from Ukraine.

As often in matches with so much at stake, both players were not able to always show the best sides to their games but that was also due to the excellent preparation of the Ukrainian as there was no game where Muzychuk did not stand better or was at least equal after the opening.

Only when the position opened up—the second, fourth and ninth games, all with the White pieces—that Hou was able to win.

Hou first qualified for the Women’s World Championship at just 14 years of age but was just too inexperienced then to dethrone Alexandra Kosteniuk but two years later, took the title for the first time to become the youngest ever winner at 16. 

In 2012, she was surprisingly eliminated at an early stage in the championship’s knock -out version as she was ill but took back the title again the following year from Anna Ushnenina.

Ironically, if indeed there are any takers for the next Women’s World Chess Championship—again to be played as a knock-out and due this year thanks to postponement of the just concluded cycle—Hou would be expected to play again to defend her just won title!

When talking about the World Championship and how the World Chess Federation (FIDE) goes about organising and promoting it and chess, it has to be said that there was not a great deal of publicity and interest in the Women’s World Chess Championship when they allowed overlapping dates for the Candidates Tournament to select a challenger for World Champion Magnus Carlsen.

The Candidates tournament from March 11-26, 2016 is being held in Moscow (who else would want to do it?). One of the major controversies in recent years has been the award of the rights which are shrouded in secrecy by FIDE for the World Championship and other major tournaments like the Grand Prix to a company called Agon.

Essentially the terms give away the FIDE crown jewels to Agon and the allegations are that the key leadership of FIDE have both ownership and vested interest.

In organising the Candidates Tournament—done very well on the ground apparently—Agon failed in the one area which was used by FIDE to explain (or justify) their involvement and that is simply to bring in expert and professional marketing and promotions.

Leading up to the event, Agon claimed in a press release that New York would host the match between the winner and Carlsen but neither the sponsor or even venue were named.

This is consistent with the FIDE President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov’s promise that there were many interested parties who want to hold the match in the US (again without details) despite his being on the US Treasury sanctions list.

Even if this were all true, with the cloud over FIDE and Agon due to its Russian connections, is any of this even legal? 

It was during the week leading up to the start of the Candidates Tournament, however, that Agon managed to create the biggest controversy by suddenly announcing that only their website World Chess, still very much a work in progress, would be allowed to broadcast the games. 

The question of ownership of a game played has long been argued with the scoresheet (not the moves of the game) today recognised as the property of the organiser.

Copyright has been notoriously hard to prove, let alone successfully justified, so most arguments have settled on the value added to the moves themselves which—in the old days of magazines and books—revolve around the annotations added be it in the form of explanation of moves or even proposed (possible) continuations. 

Most fights (accusations) then and even today have been about this type of plagiarism when source attribution is not made.

It is more complicated now with easily available commercial technology making it possible for the moves of games to be transmitted “live” as well as embed computer analysis on the screen, there is often now also video commentary.

A summary of typical reactions can be found here but emotion aside, the issue is whether one can restrict transmission of moves and if in fact this is really being done to ensure that audience traffic is captured only by www.worldchess.com.  

When suspending common sense, it is very hard to debate the merits from the right perspective and now Agon has claimed to have taken legal action against four of the most prominent sites that regularly transmit the moves of games played in major events. 

I think my friends in all these great online chess-playing sites need to understand that the real threat is from the autocratic and monopolistic tendencies of the likes of FIDE and Agon.

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.