2025 Women's World Chess Championship Game 4: Neck and Neck

Ju Wenjun holds the draw, despite the time disadvantage and harder position to navigate, with the match entering the second rest day tied.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 5 starts at 07:00 UTC on Wednesday, April 9th, and GM Felix Blohberger will join our stream!

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

The annotations by WIM Silvia Raluca Sgîrcea for Game 4 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.

Match score 

Recap
Don't change a winning team - or so they say in other sports. Whether this proverb's wisdom translates well into chess and opening choices is very much up to debate; that being said, Tan Zhongyi, following her game 2 win, opted once more for the English opening. What did, however, change, is Ju's response choice; going for 1...e6, a lot of transpositions to other openings (including a few d4 lines) are possible, however with 2.Nc3 they entered the Agincourt Defense, which is a fairly solid yet flexible choice for black; arguably the resulting positions can very much suit Ju's style.