The first round of the Cyprus WGP was highly entertaining. Except for the encounter between the Muzychuk sisters, which ended in a quick draw, the four remaining games were fought to the bitter end, resulting in two important wins for Stavroula Tsolakidou and Zhu Jiner.
The fourth leg of the FIDE Women’s Grand Prix 2024-25 kicked off this afternoon at 15:00 in the fantastic Hilton Nicosia. Evgenii Tiapkin, executive director of main sponsor Freedom24, performed the ceremonial first move for Stavroula Tsolakidou.
One of the toughest events of the six that compose the Grand Prix, Cyprus features leg 2 winner Aleksandra Goryachkina, former Women’s World Champions Anna and Mariya Muzychuk, side-by-side with young powerhouses such as China’s Zhu Jiner and Greece’s own Stavroula Tsolakidou.
If the fighting spirit displayed this afternoon at the Hilton Nicosia is a prelude to the rest of the tournament, glorious afternoons of great chess await us. Let’s take a closer look at all five games.
Aleksandra Goryachkina 1/2-1/2 Nana Dzagnidze
Thanks to her two excellent results in Shymkent and Monaco, Goryachkina currently leads the Grand Prix and is widely considered the favourite here: a strong performance in Cyprus would practically secure her spot in the next women’s Candidates Tournament. Starting off the tournament with White against Georgia’s Nana Dzagnidze, with whom she has a +3 =8 record with no defeats, couldn’t be better.
But Dzagnidze is a very experienced player, and her international rating of 2513 is no small feat. She tends to play with strength and focus: defeating her takes a lot of energy and commitment.
Goryachkina began with the Queen’s Gambit, one of her usual openings, against which Dzagnidze had prepared a line in the Accepted Variation, in which she faces an isolated queen’s pawn. Although Goryachkina developed a small initiative during the first moves, Dzagnidze neutralized White’s attack and ultimately exchanged queens.
The endgame seemed to favour the Georgian GM very slightly but, low on time, she wasn’t able to capitalize, and the game petered out into a draw. Both players performed this afternoon at the highest level with an all-around 98% accuracy score.
Anna Muzychuk 1/2-1/2 Mariya Muzychuk
The Muzychuk sisters have faced each other in classical chess on twenty-one occasions in the past. Except for a single win by Anna in the 2002 U-12 Ukrainian Girls Championship, all the other games have ended in draws, and this afternoon’s encounter was no exception.
Today they battled it out in a 99% accuracy Najdorf Sicilian, more specifically a line that features eleven master games that all end in equal endgings and subsequent draws: for example, a 2009 bout between elite GM’s Akopian and Miroshnichenko.
Although the tournament rules forbid draws before 40 moves have been played, a three-fold repetition is one of the few exceptions to the rule, and a peaceful outcome was signed on move twenty-seven.
Divya Deshmukh 1/2-1/2 Harika Dronavalli
As per rules, players of the same federation must face each other in the first round. Both Indian players, playing in their second tournament of the cycle, decided to go for a fight, but proceeded with caution trying not to overstep.
The result? A long, 50-move, 98% accuracy draw, more than enough for both players to be content with their over-the-board efforts. In their previous three encounters, Harika was dominating with two wins and one draw but today she had to settle for a half-point.
For most of the game, in a well-known solid line of the Ruy Lopez Berlin, fan-favourite Divya nurtured a very small edge with White. But the pawn structure was symmetrical and Harika managed to force some interesting exchanges – it soon became clear that the talented young player from Nagpur wasn’t getting anywhere.
Moreover, her experienced opponent finally obtained the bishop pair and, for a moment, entertained the idea to press for the advantage, but to no avail. Divya kept things under control and a three-fold repetition was recorded on move fifty.
Zhu Jiner 1-0 Olga Badelka
A six-event cycle that runs over several months is bound to produce replacements. Players that may fall ill, or run into other commitments, vacate their spots for other contenders, under the specific rules of the competition. Both Zhu Jiner and Olga Badelka fall into this category.
Although Nicosia is the fourth of the six tournaments, and all players are set to play three, funnily enough, for both of them this is their first event! Olga Badelka has replaced Regina Theissl-Pokorna and will play in Cyprus and her home country Austria, while Zhu Jiner is replacing China’s own Lei Tingjie and will add the India and Austria legs to Cyprus.
Even though the game began as a Ruy Lopez, it soon developed into a slow Italian opening. Going into the middlegame, it seemed that Badelka had equalised comfortable but a couple of minor inaccuracies – 15…Bxf3 and above all 20…Nh7 landed her in a very difficult position.
Zhu Jiner had the two bishops against her opponent’s two knights, plays a superior pawn structure. To top it all, Badelka was slowly spending all her time, in an attempt to defend against her opponent’s attack.
With excellent combinatorial play, the Chinese prodigy won a couple of pawns and opened up the gate to her opponent’s king, forcing the Austrian to resign on move forty-seven.
In her postgame interview, Zhu Jiner gave us her thoughts on her fine performance.
Stavroula Tsolakidou 1-0 Elisabeth Paehtz
The other victory of the day went to Greece’s top-ranked female player, Stavroula Tsolakidou. The twenty-four-year-old player from Kavala, who actually turns twenty-five during this event, gave a fine performance against another very experimented GM, Elisabeth Paehtz, representing Germany.
Both players went down a rabbit hole in an extensively pre-analysed variation of the Sicilian Rossolimo Attack. On move thirteen, with both opponents having used hardly any time on the clocks, Paehtz offered a draw by means of a three-fold repetition attempt.
Eager to continue the fight, Stavroula went into the tank, considered her options, and after thirty minutes (!) declined the offer and began to progress on the queenside. Both players went back and forth, but the edge was always on the Whit’s side.
But at the same time, Stavroula was spending a lot of time on the clock and, with twelve moves to for the time control, she was down to her last ten minutes – meanwhile, Paehtz still had more than forty to work with.
Moment of the Day
The moment of the day occurred just before the time control. Stavroula had just captured the pawn on e5 (38.Qc3xe5).
Paehtz could have played now 38…h6, vacating the h7 square for her king, and try to hold a worse position. Instead, she opted for 38…Rxc2, which indeed is the most human move in the position, and also the idea of invading with her rook to the seventh file.
But after 39.Bh6! Black is totally lost. The threat of mate on g7 forced 39…Qxe5 and after 40.Nxe5 the dark bishop is overloaded and Black loses material. The game ended after 40…Kh8 41.Nxc6 Bh4 and now 42.g3 forced resignation because the bishop is trapped. If Black captures the pawn on g3, 43.Rf8 is winning on the spot.
Check out Stavroula’s postgame interview, in which she talks about the game and shows some fantastic lines on the computer!
Round two pairings and dates
The second round of the fourth leg in the 2024/25 Women’s Grand Prix series starts on Sunday, March 16th at 15:00 CET local time in Nicosia, Cyprus.
Round 2 pairings:
DZAGNIDZE, NANA – BADELKA, OLGA
PAEHTZ, ELISABETH – ZHU, JINER
DRONAVALLI, HARIKA – TSOLAKIDOU, STAVROULA
MUZYCHUK, MARIYA – DIVYA, DESHMUKH
GORYACHKINA, ALEKSANDRA – MUZYCHUK, ANNA
More information about the event, including the regulations and details of the pairings, as well as live games can be found on the official website: womengrandprix.fide.com.
You can follow the games live and watch the action with our wonderful commentators GM Alik Gershon and WGM Anastasiya Karlovich on YouTube.
Written by Michael Rahal
Photos: Mark Livshitz
