Havana, August 1 (JIT)-- Lisandra Ordaz was the only Cuban player to advance to the second round of the Azerbaijan 2023 Fide World Cup, which Carlos Daniel Albornoz and Luis Ernesto Quesada also reached.
The player from Pinar del Río, the only woman on the island with the title of international master without distinction of sex, agreed a draw with the American Jennifer Yu, after 64 sets of a King's Indian Defense.
That performance determined her inclusion among the 64 best players of the competition, as she had defeated the northern player in the first of the two classical games of the match.
For the second time in a row, the player from the back of the baseline has advanced to the opening round in these competitions. Two years ago, in the Russian city of Sochi, she eliminated Azerbaijan's Turken Mamedjarova before losing to Russia's Alina Kashinskaya.
Going one step further looks like a titanic task, considering that her next opponent, free in the previous round, appears among the strong candidates to conquer the throne.
The Russian Aleksandra Goryachkina holds the grandmaster title without distinction of sex, as well as three national crowns. Her Elo accumulated once reached 2,611 points, the fourth highest ever recorded by a woman.
Yerisbel Miranda and Yaniela Forgas, the other Cuban women who took part in this section, drew this Monday against Poland's Klaudia Kulon and India's Mary Ann Gomes, in that order. Those divisions were not enough to keep them in the competition, as they had lost in their initial matches.
In the open section, Albornoz and Quesada repeated the draws signed in the opening, so their fate will depend on the rapid games scheduled for today.
Albornoz agreed a draw after 105 moves of a Catalan System against Kazakhstan's Alisher Suleymenov, while Luis Ernesto reached the 47th move of a Queen Pawn Double against Turkey's Emre Can.
For Latin America, Paraguay's Axel Bachman, Chile's Cristobal Henriquez and Pablo Salinas, Brazil's Alexandr Fier, Uruguay's Geor Meier and Peru's Emilio Cordova have already secured places among the top 64.
