Chinese grandmaster Zhu Chen, 27, the ninth Women's World Chess champion, won the Accoona Women's World Chess Championship on Tuesday by defeating American rising star Irina Krush, 21, in a dramatic two-game match in the ABC Times Square Studios in New York.

Chen won one game and drew the other. Chen and Krush played in the windowed studio at street level, making the Accoona event the most public championship in the history of chess.

Accoona.com, a new SuperCool Artificial Intelligence Search Engine, organized the match as a cultural exchange event between China and America. Accoona.com enjoys a unique partnership in China with the China Daily Information Company, the largest and official English Language Web destination in China, from which Accoona has access to over 10 million unique visitors per day.

The Accoona Women's World Chess Championship was sanctioned by the New York City Sports Commission, the US Chess Federation, and the Association of Chess Professionals.

When the first women entered an international chess tournament in London in 1897, commentators dismissed their chances on the grounds that "they would come under great strain lifting the leaded, wooden chess pieces." More than a century later, world-class chess is still dominated by men, but a few remarkable female players have made it to the highest echelons.

On Tuesday, Chinese grandmaster Zhu Chen and international master Irina Krush left no doubt that they could play brilliant top-notch chess. The two women have an intense personal rivalry that dates back half a decade. At the 2000 Women's World Championship in New Delhi, India, a knockout tournament among 64 first-rate players, 16-year-old Krush turned back the heavily favored Chen in the first round, dashing her championship hopes for the year. In 2002 Chen finally got her revenge when she faced Krush in a four-game match between China and the United States and won three of them. With yesterday's victory Chen improved her lifetime record over Krush to four wins and two losses.

Over the past two decades, chess has skyrocketed in popularity in China from a game played by a few thousand people to a game played by five million. Zhu Chen first gained international prominence in 1988, when she won the World Girls Under 12 Championship in Romania; it was the first time a Chinese player had won a world chess competition. In 2001, when Chen was 25, she became the ninth Women's World Champion.

"I am a woman who plays a man's game," Chen said after clinching the title. "So I balance feminine emotions with masculine logic to become the strongest player possible."

Irina Krush was born in Odessa, Ukraine, on Christmas Eve 1983. She learned to play chess when she was five, in 1989, the year she emigrated with her parents to Brooklyn. She was a master when she was 12. In 1988, at 14, she became the youngest player ever to win the US Women's Championship. In 2000 she continued to break records by becoming the first American woman to earn the title of international master. In October 2004 she played second board for the US Women's Team that won a silver medal in the Chess Olympiad in Spain. In December 2004 she defeated French champion Almira Skripchenko in the first Accoona chess challenge.

Source: China Daily