Lei Tingjie vs Ju Wenjun: A Match a Decade in the Making.
It's pretty rare to see two players from the same country face off against each other on the world's biggest stage. With the Women's World Chess Championship between Lei Tingjie and Ju Wenjun now underway, I thought is would be interesting to compare how these two players got to this stage and look at how the two have faced off in the past.
Chess and Childhood
Ju Wenjun, the older of the two, was born in 1991 and started to play chess when she was 7. In 1997, Lei Tingjie was born. Ju Wenjun earned her WGM title in 2009 and then 5 years later she earned her GM title. Just around the time Ju Wenjun got GM, Lei Tingjie earned her WGM title in a tournament where she beat out Ju Wenjun on tiebreaks.
Bursting on to the Scene
Ju Wenjun would go on to reach the 2600 mark in 2017 and would win her first world championship in 2018. Lei Tingjie on the other hand, won the Chinese National Championship in 2017 and earned silver at the Women's Rapid Championship.
Road to the 2023 Championship Match
Ju Wenjun earned her spot by being the defending champion and she is looking to hold on to her title of world champion in this match. Lei Tingjie's path has gone through her victory at the Women's Grand Swiss which qualified her for the Candidates which she also won. That candidates win qualified her for the World Championship match vs Ju.
Past Matchups
According to Chess.com's Archives, the two had played 14 games against each other going into the match. The results of these games were wins 7 for Ju, 2 wins for Lei and 5 draws. While this might make it seem that Ju is the far superior player, we must also take into account that the games date back to 2011 when Lei would have just been 14. In fact in Ju's first 2 victories vs Lei, Ju was rated 500 points higher. However, more recently the games between the two have become very competitive, especially as Lei has improved to become one of the top players in the world.
Here is a game from 2017.
Thanks for reading!
Let me know who you think is going to win!
God Bless!
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