Humpy suffers third straight loss

Koneru Humpy's bid to become the youngest woman to win the men's Grandmaster's title suffered a jolt as the teenager lost her third successive game in the First Saturday Grandmasters' chess tournament in Budapest, Hungary, on Wednesday.

The World junior champion woman Grandmaster (2539), who was trounced by Algimantas Butnorius and Albert Vajda of Romania in the first two rounds respectively, went down to Dennis Breder of Germany (2411).

Humpy has the uneviable task of scoring 9.5 points in the remaining 10 rounds.

International Master Butnorious (2249) of Lithuvania, International Master Breder and International Master Vajda (2364) are joint leaders with 2.5 each at the end of the third round.

Following are the standings after the third round:

1. Butnorius, Algimantas (Lithuania) 2449, Breder, Dennis (Germany) 2441, Vajda, Albert (Romania) 2364 -- 2.5 points.
4. Erdos, Viktor (Hungary) 2383 -- 2
5. Varga, Zoltan (Hungary) 2510, Lukacs, Peter (Hungary) 2444, Kustar, Sandor (Hungary) 2413, Balogh, Csaba (Hungary) 2398 -- 1.5
9. Flumbort, Andras (Hungary) 2436, Antal, Gergely (Hungary) 2426 -- 1
11 Jakab, Attila (Hungary) 2406 -- 0.5
12 . Koneru, Humpy (India) 2539, Kosanovic, Goran (Yugoslavia) 2428, Dembo, Yelena (Hungary) 2346 -- 0.