Accoona.com, the new SuperCool Artificial Intelligence Search Engine, presented the Accoona World Women's Chess Championship on March 1, 2005, 5:00 p.m., at The ABC Times Square Studios, in the heart of New York City. Two of these rare women, Grandmaster Zhu Chen, 27, the ninth Women's World Chess Champion from China, and International Master Irina Krush, 21, a rising American star, will play for the Accoona World Chess Championship in ABC's Times Square Studios at 46th Street and Broadway. The women played two games of rapid chess, with each dramatic encounter lasting at most one hour. Ms. Zhu won the match and is the Accoona World Chess Champion,
This world-class Chess event, sanctioned by the New York City Sports Commission, the US Chess Federation, and the Association of Chess Professionals, was an exciting cultural exchange between China and America.
Accoona 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. 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."
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.. 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.
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.
Accoona (http://www.Accoona.com) is a Web Search Technology company dedicated to making it easier for people to find information on the Internet. The Accoona Artificial Intelligence Search Technology understands the meaning of words and allows users to "Super target" key words within a search query, thus providing more relevant results.(Source: Accoona.com News).