FIDE, Chess.com Announce 2020 Women's Speed Chess Championship
FIDE and Chess.com have announced the 2020 FIDE Chess.com Women's Speed Chess Championship, an online competition for female players to be held between June 18 and July 20, 2020. The tournament has a total prize fund of $52,000.
The International Chess Federation and Chess.com are partnering once again, this time bringing a newly formatted Women's Speed Chess Championship that offers a chance to any titled female player to play and qualify for the main Grand Prix.
Hopefuls can now qualify directly because of an extended format, which now consists of four different stages:
- Titled Swiss Tournaments
- Playoff Qualifiers
- Grand Prix
- Super Final
A total of six titled Swiss tournaments will be played, which will be open to any titled female player (WCM/WFM/WIM/WGM/FM/IM/GM). They will be played June 18-23 and start at 7 a.m. Pacific time / 16:00 Central Europe for the first three qualifiers, and 9 a.m. Pacific time / 18:00 Central Europe for the last three qualifiers. Players can register by navigating to the upcoming tournaments tab located at Chess.com/play/online up to one hour before each qualifier begins. All participants must have their full legal name in their profile or will be removed from the competition.
Important: All players are subject to random fair play proctoring and therefore must have a webcam and microphone in order to participate. Any player who enters the top-20 in the standings of any Swiss qualifier will be required to join a zoom call with screen share, playing area check, and other fair play measures. This will be a rolling policy for all participants. The zoom link will be sent via Chess.com chat directly in live chess.
The top eight finishers from each titled Swiss tournament will qualify for a Playoff Qualifier held directly after each event, which will be a knockout with the top-two finishers qualifying for the Grand Prix phase.
The Grand Prix will consist of four legs, with a total of 21 participants: the 12 players who qualified through the Swiss and Playoffs, plus nine seeded players:
- Ju Wenjun (China)
- Kateryna Lagno (Russia)
- Alexandra Kosteniuk (Russia)
- Anna Muzychuk (Ukraine)
- Irina Krush (USA)
- Zhansaya Abdumalik (Kazakhstan)
- Sarasadat Khademalsharieh (Iran)
- Humpy Koneru
- TBD
Each of the 21 players participates in three out of four Grand Prix legs. One wild card nominated by the FIDE President is invited to take part in one of the Grand Prix legs.
Each Grand Prix leg is a 16-player knockout and will last five days (including one rest day after the semi-finals). The dates will be June 24-28, July 01-05, July 08-12, and July 15-19, with games starting at 5:30 a.m. Pacific time / 14:30 Central Europe.
The two players who score the highest number of cumulative Grand Prix points in all three Grand Prix legs qualify for the Super Final, played on International Chess Day, July 20.
All FIDE Women's Speed Chess Championship matches will be broadcast live with chess-master commentary on Chess.com/TV.
More information about the FIDE Chess.com Women's Speed Chess Championship can be found here.
Peter Doggers joined a chess club a month before turning 15 and still plays for it. He used to be an active tournament player and holds two IM norms.
Peter has a Master of Arts degree in Dutch Language & Literature. He briefly worked at New in Chess, then as a Dutch teacher and then in a project for improving safety and security in Amsterdam schools.
Between 2007 and 2013 Peter was running ChessVibes, a major source for chess news and videos acquired by Chess.com in October 2013.
As our Director News & Events, Peter writes many of our news reports. In the summer of 2022, The Guardian’s Leonard Barden described him as “widely regarded as the world’s best chess journalist.”
In October, Peter's first book The Chess Revolution will be published!
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