GM Tan Zhongyi received with the black items in opposition to GM Lei Tingjie to complete in third place on the 2025 FIDE Ladies’s World Cup. She qualifies for the 2026 FIDE Ladies’s Candidates and earns a $25,000 prize. The match for first place, between IM Divya Deshmukh and GM Koneru Humpy, will go to tiebreaks after an correct draw.
The Finals tiebreaks start three hours sooner than the common schedule. They are going to be on Monday, July 28, beginning at 4 a.m. ET / 10:00 CEST / 1:30 p.m. IST.
Ladies’s World Cup Finals Outcomes
One match is over and only one match stays.
You may see the prize breakdown under:
Humpy ½-½ Divya
In comparison with the firefight in recreation one, we noticed a calmer encounter in recreation two. Humpy began with 1.Nf3 d5 2.e3, one thing that is recently been known as the Keymer Variation of the Reti Opening. For 16 strikes, the gamers adopted a top-level recreation, GM Hikaru Nakamura vs. GM Magnus Carlsen, Chess.com Traditional 2025, the place White had two bishops in opposition to two knights.
The all-Indian closing match is deadlocked after two classical video games. Photograph: Anna Shtourman/FIDE.
The 4 rooks acquired traded, after which a pair of minor items. Divya by no means acquired an opportunity. However similar to on the day before today, when she tried to proceed the battle with 30.Kh2, she tried the double-edged 24…g6 (24…Nd4 would have been easier), quickly holding onto the pawn at the price of weakened darkish squares. Equal nonetheless means equal, and the gamers reached the logical consequence a method or one other.
Divya answered a number of questions in her interview. About Saturday, she mentioned, “I used to be fairly disenchanted with the primary recreation clearly as a result of I noticed every little thing and I simply all the time ended up making the fallacious alternative, and it was fairly a pity.” She added, “Though it was a draw, it sort of felt like a loss,” and recreation two was about recovering from that.
I used to be fairly disenchanted with the primary recreation.
—Divya Deshmukh
She mentioned right now was “significantly simpler” and “I believe I acquired myself into a multitude for no purpose. I used to be attempting to see if there was a win, however I missed this …Qb8 [on move 26]…. It ought to have been a simple draw.” She acknowledged that she usually retains a recreation going, even when the choice is unsound, a bent World Champion Gukesh Dommaraju additionally had in his title match in opposition to GM Ding Liren, concluding, “This has usually led me to fairly just a few wins but in addition fairly just a few losses.”
Lastly, if Divya wins this match, she’s going to robotically earn the grandmaster title with out the necessity for norms or the ranking requirement. How does she cope with the stress? “I simply inform myself that I’ve the remainder of my life to be unhappy about it, so do not be unhappy right now and we may be unhappy about it afterwards.” If she loses the match, she’s going to nonetheless stroll away along with her first GM norm.
I simply inform myself that I’ve the remainder of my life to be unhappy about it.
—Divya Deshmukh
Divya noticed the opposite match throughout her recreation. Photograph: Anna Shtourman/FIDE.
Lei 0-1 Tan
After successful the knockout in 2017 (then it was the Ladies’s World Chess Championship), Tan reached the World Cup Semifinals within the three editions that adopted. In 2021 she completed third, in 2023 fourth, and now in 2025 third once more. Curiously, this yr she received all six matches within the occasion solely within the classical portion, with no single tiebreak.
After a number of weeks of play, we noticed nerves and exhaustion play a crucial function for either side, however Tan outlasted her opponent within the roughly five-hour battle.
Tan managed to keep away from tiebreaks altogether. Photograph: Anna Shtourman/FIDE.
In an Italian Sport, Lei sacrificed a pawn within the opening, saddling Black with a wrecked pawn construction. However later it was Black who gave the pawn again—and gave one other pawn after that—to achieve time and generate threats in opposition to the king. These threats certainly materialized, although solely briefly as Lei landed in a misplaced place however simply as rapidly wriggled out of it after the miss 35…Rxe4?.
Tan Zhongyi misses the successful transfer 35…Qf1 and it appears to be like like we are going to probably have tiebreaks within the match for third place too!https://t.co/lboTY4wx5dpic.twitter.com/aqDankYcdy
The sport is not over till the scoresheets are signed, nonetheless. The present went on and, following finest play, Lei emerged with a knight and two pawns for the trade—queens nonetheless on the board. With three minutes left, she needed to discover the one transfer 48.Qf5 to outlive with an eventual perpetual verify, however 48.Qd5? gave Tan the second likelihood she wanted. Up the trade, she transformed flawlessly and with a shocking closing transfer. GM Rafael Leitao goes over the total Sport of the Day under.
All that is left is the match for first place, and we’re assured to have loads of motion within the tiebreaks on Monday. Keep in mind, it begins three hours early!
Learn how to watch?
You may comply with the 2025 FIDE Ladies’s World Cup video games on our Occasions Web page. You may watch reside commentary on the FIDE YouTube channel.
The 2025 FIDE Ladies’s World Cup takes place on the Grand Bellagio Resort & On line casino in Batumi, Georgia. It’s a 107-player match with a single-elimination knockout format and a classical time management of 90 minutes for the primary 40 strikes and half-hour for the remainder of the sport, plus a 30-second increment per transfer from the primary transfer. Every spherical consists of two video games on the classical time management, adopted by a tiebreak in quicker time controls in case the scores are tied.
