Women’s World Championship Match 1-23 April 2025

[Mick Norris]

website

The 2025 FIDE Women’s World Chess Championship, featuring a highly anticipated rematch between two of China’s top Grandmasters: the reigning Champion, Ju Wenjun, and the Challenger, Tan Zhongyi, is the culmination of the FIDE Women’s World Championship Cycle 2023-2025. The title of the women’s World Chess Champion is decided in 12 games and a tiebreak in case of a tie.

The title match is scheduled to take place from April 1 to 23, 2025, across two Chinese cities: Shanghai and Chongqing.
The time control for each game is 90 minutes for the first 40 moves, followed by 30 minutes for the rest of the game, with an increment of 30 seconds per move starting from move 1.

First game appears to be Thursday 3 April

[Jon D'Souza-Eva]

Their first match in 2018, when Zhongyi Tan was the World Champion, was quite exciting. Here is game 5 from that match:
[Event "Tan - Ju Women's World Championship Match"] [Site "Shanghai CHN"] [Date "2018.05.09"] [EventDate "2018.05.02"] [Round "5"] [Result "0-1"] [White "Tan Zhongyi"] [Black "Ju Wenjun"] [ECO "C24"] [WhiteElo "2522"] [BlackElo "2571"] [PlyCount "70"] 1. e4 e5 2. Bc4 Nf6 3. d3 c6 4. Nf3 d5 5. Bb3 a5 6. a4 Bb4+ 7. c3 Bd6 8. O-O O-O 9. exd5 cxd5 10. Na3 Nbd7 11. Re1 h6 12. Nb5 Bb8 13. d4 e4 14. Nd2 Nb6 15. f3 Re8 16. Bc2 Bd7 17. Rb1 exf3 18. Nxf3 Ne4 19. Ne5 Bxe5 20. dxe5 Bxb5 21. axb5 Rxe5 22. Be3 Re6 23. Bd4 Nc4 24. Bd3 Qg5 25. b3 Ncd6 26. Rb2 Rae8 27. Rbe2 Nf5 28. Bc2 Nh4 29. Qd3 Ng6 30. Be3 Qh5 31. c4 Ne5 32. Qd4 Rg6 33. Bxe4 dxe4 34. Kf1 Nf3 35. Qd7 Nxh2+ 0-1

[LawrenceCooper]

Game 1 was drawn in 39 moves.

[Mick Norris]

Chess Mind analysis of game 1

Leonard in the Guardian

[LawrenceCooper]

Tan wins game 2 in 62 moves. A seemingly harmless rook ending that Tan won relatively comfortably. https://lichess.org/broadcast/fide-wome ... u/Oi0E5C9E

[Roger de Coverly]

Tan wins game 2 in 62 moves. A seemingly harmless rook ending that Tan won relatively comfortably.

According to the lichess Stockfish, it went wrong in this position.

5k2/1R3pp1/8/1p3r1p/3P1P2/4K1P1/7P/8 b - - 0 40

.. Ke8 is flagged as the major error with .. b4 suggested to be only slightly worse.

[Mick Norris]

Presumably this is to allow Ke7 after Rxb4?

[LawrenceCooper]

Tan wins game 2 in 62 moves. A seemingly harmless rook ending that Tan won relatively comfortably.

According to the lichess Stockfish, it went wrong in this position.

5k2/1R3pp1/8/1p3r1p/3P1P2/4K1P1/7P/8 b - - 0 40

.. Ke8 is flagged as the major error with .. b4 suggested to be only slightly worse.

38.....Rf5 felt like a step in the wrong direction. Not a fatal mistake but making life more difficult.

[Paul Cooksey]

Really excellent commentary on the chess24 youtube of the R+P ending by Jovanka Houska and Judit Polgar. As you would expect since Judit told an anecdote about trying to find the mistakes in Smyslov's Rook Endings book when she was seven. Or possibly eight, but probably seven.

It was really difficult to defend at the moment Ju went Stockfish wrong. Judit blaming the defeat on the decision to move the defending rook from the b-file to the fifth rank even if, to use her analogy, there was still a possibility to pull the plane out of its dive before it crashed.

A very good day for Tan. Good technique and an excellent cardigan.

[Mick Norris]

Ju wins game 3

[Matt Mackenzie]

Game 4 is drawn in 80 moves, we are certainly getting our money's worth for effort at least in this match so far.

[Mick Norris]

Ju wins game 5

TWIC

Ju Wenjun took a 3-2 lead over Tan Zhongyi after winning the fifth game of he World Women's title defence. She had white and faced a Kan Sicilian, her 10.c5 novelty brought an immediate mistake and she was completely winning after 20 moves. Tan provided stout resistance after that but the objective assessment never changed and 59.Ne7+ brought about her resignation. This is the penultimate game before the match moves from Shanghai to Chongqing.

[Matt Mackenzie]

The trend with Black struggling in all the games is ended as Ju wins with that colour, and must be the pretty strong favourite now.

[Paul Cooksey]

Ju won again today. Her 5-2 lead looks unassailable in a 12 game match.

Tan does seem to be playing below her level since going behind. Hard to understand how she went from a healthy R+2B vs RNB to a losing RB v RN today.

[Matt Mackenzie]

Tan getting her B stuck on a8 like that was a bit