A match for the women’s world chess championship is being played as I write this post. The two contestants are Zhongyi Tan, the current champion, and Wenjun Ju, the challenger. Both players are from China.

(Update: Wenjun Ju won the 10-game match 5.5 to 4.5 to become world champion.)

The match is being played in Shanghai and is the best of 10 games. After the first three games, the challenger has a 2.5 – 0.5 lead. But there are still seven games to go so anything can happen.

The third game was very exciting. Wenjun Ju had the white pieces and played the Catalan opening which has a reputation for being safe and conservative. But after only 26 moves, the challenger had the champion in dire straits. In this position, black has just played Kd7, attacking white’s rook.

The challenger pounced with Qd4 check, leaving her rook unprotected! If black takes the rook, Qd6 checkmate follows, and if the king retreats, black loses her queen in three moves (easy for a grandmaster to see, but not so obvious to chess mortals like me).

There’s a long and fascinating connection between chess and computer science and artificial intelligence. I hope to discuss some of these ideas in a future post.