Tan, Assaubayeva, Tsolakidou Win As 2nd Women's Grand Prix Begins

Women's World Championship Challenger GM Tan Zhongyi showed she could checkmate with a knight and bishop as she ground down GM Elisabeth Paehtz in 107 moves to start the 2024 Shymkent FIDE Women's Grand Prix with a win. The only two players who also took part in the first Women's Grand Prix in Tbilisi, Georgia, IMs Bibisara Assaubayeva and Stavroula Tsolakidou, also began with wins, just as they did in Tbilisi. 

Round two will start on Thursday, October 31, at 6 a.m. ET / 11:00 CET / 3:30 p.m. IST.

Round 1 Results

The Shymkent FIDE Women's Grand Prix is the second of six tournaments on the 2024-2025 series that will decide two spots in the next Women's FIDE Candidates Tournament. 

Each Grand Prix is a 10-player classical single round-robin, with the 20 participants (discounting replacements) each playing in three of the six events. The second tournament is in Shymkent, the third largest city in Kazakhstan after the better known—also from a chess perspective—Almaty and Astana. The lineup for Shymkent is as follows.

A curiosity is that only Assaubayeva and Tsolakidou play again after playing in the first event in Tbilisi, where they both finished close behind winner IM Alina Kashlinskaya.

Tbilisi Women's Grand Prix Final Standings

They were also the only players to win in round one in Tbilisi, and they did the same two months later in Shymkent.

Local hero Assaubayeva, who just missed out on her third grandmaster norm in Tbilisi, was the first player to pick up a full point. She summed up her win over IM Nurgyul Salimova bluntly:

"I had a good position after the opening. I know she didn’t know the variation, and also I had some advantage with time. Somewhere she made a mistake and somehow I won."

The computer, at least at relatively low depths, still preferred Salimova's position until 14.d7+?!.

Arguably the main problem, however, was not the move but the 20 minutes it took to play, with the 21-year-old Bulgarian finding herself almost an hour behind on the clock. When she later chose to give up a pawn, she was on the ropes, and Assaubayeva went on to score a confident win.

The win for 24-year-old Greek IM Tsolakidou, who describes this as her first year as a professional chess player after completing her studies, came in a game that initially looked likely to be a quick opposite-colored-bishop-endgame draw. "I’m slightly better and I decided to push," she revealed, and it worked out perfectly, as 37-year-old Mongolian IM Batkhuyag Munguntuul eventually made a decisive mistake in an uncomfortable, but still defendable, position.

The final win of the day came for the top seed, former women's world champion Tan Zhongyi. The 33-year-old women's world number-three will play GM Ju Wenjun in 2025 for a chance to regain the title, and she looks to be in top form. She followed up winning the FIDE Women's Candidates by winning the Cairns Cup and then the Belt and Road tournament in China. 

In round one in Shymkent, she owed her victory to incredible persistence. Paehtz's knight sacrifice on move 33 of an Alapin Sicilian was flawed, but she went on to build a fortress. Tan kept pressing, however, and eventually broke through after a rook that was stuck on b7 for 40 moves moved unnecessarily. By the end, Tan was required to prove she could checkmate with a knight and rook vs. a bare king.

Another former women's world champion, GM Anna Ushenina, had once failed at that task, but Tan made no mistake, with Paehtz resigning on move 107.

The two games that were drawn were the two clashes where players from the same country were deliberately paired against each other, a regulation aimed at reducing the risk of collusion later in the event when players know what results they need. Sometimes that means quiet draws, but in this case we saw nothing of the sort.

Indian numbers one and two, GMs Koneru Humpy and Divya Deshmukh, played an equal game that fizzled out into a logical draw, but only after an intense fight.

Meanwhile the battle between world numbers five and seven, GM Kateryna Lagno and Aleksandra Goryachkina, seemed sure to end decisively after Lagno won the opening battle by surprising with the Italian and then the rare move 6.h3. Up to a point she played almost perfectly, despite her own doubts, but one mistake in mutual time trouble, and the lion's share of her advantage slipped away.

None of the leaders clash in Thursday's round two, so Tan, Assaubayeva, and Tsolakidou can all potentially reach 2/2.

Round 2 Pairings

The 2024 Shymkent FIDE Women's Grand Prix is the second of six legs of the 2024-2025 FIDE Women's Grand Prix. The 10-player round-robin runs October 30-November 8 in Shymkent, Kazakhstan. Players have 90 minutes, plus 30 minutes from move 40, with a 30-second increment per move. The top prize is €18,000 (~$20,000), with players also earning Grand Prix points. Each of the 20 players competes in three events; the top two qualify for the 2026 FIDE Women's Candidates Tournament that decides the World Championship challenger.

Previous Coverage:

• Kashlinskaya Wins Tbilisi Grand Prix, Earns 2nd GM Norm
• FIDE Women's Grand Prix 2024-2025: All The Info