2025 Women’s World Chess Championship Game 8: Ju Nears 5th Title

Lichess is providing a live stream for every day of the Women's World Championship. Make sure to tune in to our Twitch or YouTube channels for live stream coverage with our hosts GM Toms Kantāns and WIM Jesse February, joined by a rotating panel of guests. Game 9 starts at 07:00 UTC on Wednesday, April 16th.

Additionally, we will cover every game in our blog, with annotations by WIM Silvia Raluca Sgîrcea for games 1-6 and WGM Petra Papp for games 7-12.

The annotations by WGM Petra Papp for Game 8 can be found here.

Lichess has also run player profiles on GM Ju Wenjun and GM Tan Zhongyi, and published a Match Preview ahead of the match.

Schedule

Videos

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7o2J5wMTYHs

Annotations by WGM Petra Papp

Match Score

Recap

For the first time in the match, GM Tan Zhongyi eschewed her English Opening in favor of 1. e4. Facing a three-game deficit and with her back against the wall, Tan’s more dynamic choice made a lot of sense. Tan started off with the Vienna Game, but the position quickly transposed into a line that could arise out of the Italian Game — more precisely, the Four Knights Game.

The handshake
Photo: Anna Shtourman / FIDE

GM Ju Wenjun then saddled White with doubled c-pawns, losing the bishop pair in the process, which she quickly recovered by going Na5-Nxb3.

Ju is very close to defending her 5th Women's World Championship title.
Photo: Anna Shtourman / FIDE

The next few moves saw some maneuvering play which did not change the evaluation of the position significantly. Tan brought her major pieces to the d- and e-files, while Ju relocated her knight and made plans to develop her light-squared bishop by also gaining space on the queenside.

Tan arrives to the playing hall.
Photo: Anna Shtourman / FIDE

As Tan pushed her b-pawn with 18. b4 and maneuvered her knight to the queenside, Ju’s position started looking much better as the f5 pawn break was looming and seemed quite dangerous.

The Vienna Game!
Photo: Anna Shtourman / FIDE

After some more logical developing moves, f5 came like a whirlwind and threatened not just to solve Black’s problems in the position, but also create ones for White.

A different perspective
Photo: Anna Shtourman / FIDE

Unfortunately for Tan, she did not properly react to 24...f5 with 25. exf5, instead choosing a worse option, 25. Qd4. With 28. c4?, Tan missed Ju’s powerful retort, 28...e3!, attacking White’s weak c2 pawn.

Tan faced very precise play from Ju today.
Photo: Anna Shtourman / FIDE

From that point forward, Tan perhaps could have defended better, but her position did not look pleasant at all. Her last chance to pose Ju more problems was on move 36, when she could have declined the queen trade with 36. Ne7 and created more practical problems for Ju to solve. With Ju’s c-pawn running down the board, 36. Ne7 would have in all likelihood led to a piece-down endgame where Tan had chances to hold due to her active queen. Instead, she went for the queen trade, whereafter Ju converted flawlessly in the resulting bishop vs. knight endgame.

Ju needs just one draw out of the remaining four games to defend her title.
Photo: Anna Shtourman / FIDE

Stream

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKKlA0WUs4c