Humpy draws with Yifan again

Tirana (Albania): Indian Grandmaster Koneru Humpy recovered from a difficult position to play out a draw with defending champion Yifan Hou of China in the fourth game of the World Women`s Chess Championship here.

After losing the third game with white pieces, this was a decent comeback by Humpy who was in a difficult position for most part of the match and she eventually got a draw with her second black of the 10-game contest. With the draw, the third of the contest, Yifan maintained her slender lead of 2.5-1.5. With six games to go, Humpy will have to make amends in quick time if she wants to erase the one point deficit. Playing the Ruy Lopez open for the first time in the contest, Humpy faced a topical variation and the queens were traded early in the middle game. Humpy conceded in the post match conference that she thought she stood worse after the 24th move. "After this move I think White is better in the endgame. I have weak pawns. But the question is how to convert it into a win. It was a tough game, I had to defend a lot," she said. As the game progressed, Humpy kept herself in contention with some correct defense and Yifan was critical of her play on the 36th move. "I think I could play better. Maybe I missed some good chance today. For example if I played 36.Rd1 here, I don`t know what would happen, but it could be a better continuation," Yifan noted. Humpy eventually reached a rook and minor piece endgame and exchanged pawns to finally get the half point in 58 moves. The fifth game of the 2,00,000 Euros championship will be played after the second rest day with Humpy playing black again. This is to ensure that one player does not get advantage of playing a white game after every rest day. PTI