FIDE Women’s Grand Prix Shymkent Round 9: Goryachkina Wins 130 WGP Points

Tournament Information

The FIDE Women's Grand Prix 2024/25 consists of six tournaments that grant the top two finishers spots in the FIDE Women Candidates Tournament 2026. Each of these six tournaments is a 10-player round robin. Twenty players have qualified for the FIDE Women's Grand Prix 2024/25, and each player is allowed to play in three of the six tournaments based on the players' preferences concerning which tournaments they would like to participate in. The first tournament in Tbilisi, Georgia was played August 15–24; the Shymkent Grand Prix is the second tournament of the series.

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Leaderboard

IM Nurgyul Salimova vs. GM Aleksandra Goryachkina 1/2-1/2

Photo credit: Konstantin Chalabov / FIDE

GM Aleksandra Goryachkina has won the Shymkent FIDE Women’s Grand Prix with five wins and four draws. Her five-game winning streak starting from round 3 and ending on round 8 netted her some rating points and a chance to qualify for the FIDE Women Candidates Tournament 2026. As for the final round game itself, IM Nurgyul Salimova's solid choice of the London did not grant her much of an advantage out of the opening. She did play on and had some semblance of activity on the kingside, but Goryachkina was up to the defensive task and drew without too much difficulty.

IM Stavroula Tsolakidou vs. GM Tan Zhongyi 0-1

Photo credit: Konstantin Chalabov / FIDE

IM Stavroula Tsolakidou got off to a bad start against GM Tan Zhongyi, who finished in clear second and picked up a lot of important WGP points. Tsolakidou's opening choice did not pay dividends as she was already slightly worse by move 10, at least according to Stockfish 16. To offset Tan's resulting space advantage, Tsolakidou had to put her pieces on awkward squares, and after further weakening her position, she resigned on move 22. What transpired was truly an unfortunate turn of events for Tsolakidou, who was looking to finish in at least sole third, but now shares third place with IM Bibisara Assaubayeva — Tsolakidou does have one more Grand Prix event, though, where she can hope to further improve her overall standing.

IM Bibisara Assaubayeva vs. IM Batkhuyag Munguntuul 1/2-1/2

Photo credit: Konstantin Chalabov / FIDE

IM Bibisara Assaubayeva, who finished in sole second in the Tbilisi Grand Prix, finished in shared third, alongside IM Stavroula Tsolakidou, in Shymkent. Meanwhile, the story of the day is that, of course, IM Batkhuyag Munguntuul finally played a non-decisive result: a draw! Early on, Assaubayeva's choice to go for 8. dxc4 instead of 8. Qxc4 was a sign of things to come: a quick draw was on both players' minds. After queens were traded and some congestion on the d-file relieved, further piece trades meant that a draw was inevitable.

GM Koneru Humpy vs. GM Kateryna Lagno 1/2-1/2

Photo credit: Konstantin Chalabov / FIDE

Some might remember how GM Gukesh D used the Queen's Gambit Accepted to draw a critical game in the 2024 FIDE Candidates against GM Hikaru Nakamura. A similar opening setup was chosen by GM Koneru Humpy against GM Kateryna Lagno, and an even more stable position, arising from a reasonably forcing variation, was reached. With pieces quickly getting vacuumed off the board, there was little left to play for.

GM Elisabeth Paehtz vs. IM Divya Deshmukh 1/2-1/2

Photo credit: Konstantin Chalabov / FIDE

GM Elisabeth Paehtz's game against IM Divya Deshmukh was solid in the sense that the position wasn't so tactically wild — Divya was pressing for a long time but ultimately could not make her opponent break. This exciting encounter did provide a very intriguing opening phase, though. Already Paehtz's endgame-enticing 3. d3 against the Caro-Kann was not the most common choice, and so too was Divya's 3...g6 in response. Black was also playing with a space advantage, another uncommon happening in the Caro-Kann. Paehtz's inaccurate opening play eventually made her have to defend a flimsy position, but she was up to the task and escaped what could have been a bad end to her tournament.