Sara Khadem, Nana Dzagnidze, Mariya Muzychuk All Score 1st Wins
GMs Nana Dzagnidze and Mariya Muzychuk have joined the leaders of the 2024 Tbilisi FIDE Women's Grand Prix after scoring dramatic first wins to beat GMs Alexandra Kosteniuk and Vaishali Rameshbabu in round five. There was also a first win for IM Sara Khadem, who shrugged off her 0.5/4 start to beat IM Lela Javakhishvili in style.
Round six will start on Wednesday, August 21, at 7 a.m. ET / 13:00 CEST / 4:30 p.m. IST.
It was all change in Tbilisi on Monday, with three of the five games decisive.
Round 5 Results
We now have four leaders, with Mariya Muzychuk and Dzagnidze scoring wins after drawing their first four games.
Standings After Round 5
Iranian-born Khadem, who now lives in and plays for Spain, had experienced the toughest possible start in Tbilisi, losing three of her first four games. She told WGM Keti Tsatsalashvili on the live broadcast:
It’s a tournament that if it goes wrong it can go very wrong, because everybody is good and they’re all very well-prepared. And for me it was after six months that I just got back to chess, so I was struggling a little bit, and I had three Blacks out of the four games. Preparation-wise I was not in my comfort zone, so yes, it was a bit difficult, but I felt like today I would just play and go with the flow, so I’m glad it went in a good way!
If there was one good side to scoring 0.5/4, it was that Khadem felt her opponent Javakhishvili underestimated her a little and slipped into a dangerous position. One mistake was all it took for Khadem to be able to unleash a winning bishop sacrifice, 22.Bxg6!.
Khadem had seen a couple of moves earlier that the key idea was then to follow up with f4, and she went on to score a very smooth win.
All three decisive games featured a game turning blunder, but none more drastic than in Vaishali vs. Mariya Muzychuk.
The Indian star had seized the initiative in a complicated middlegame but stumbled in time trouble before playing the losing 36.Rb7+?? in a position where 36.Qd3! would still have kept a big advantage. Vaishali played the move with five seconds on her clock.
Perhaps she'd missed that Black has Qe1+ and mate next move if the b1-rook has left the back rank. In any case, Mariya was soon an exchange and a pawn up and went on to win easily.
Mariya said afterward: "I know if I lose to an Indian player it will be published everywhere—the best way to escape it is to win!"
Kosteniuk seemed to have emerged with an advantage from a razor-sharp theoretical line when she made one rash tactical decision, 16...Bxa3?!, and suddenly found herself in a world of hurt against Dzagnidze, whose fighting spirit in the previous rounds was finally rewarded with a win.
That saw Dzagdnize replace Kosteniuk as a co-leader, while two of the other leaders scored the day's only draws. IM Bibisara Assaubayeva noted "It's tough to win a game!" after getting nothing but a quick draw against GM Anna Muzychuk.
IM Alina Kashlinskaya felt she got "a very bad endgame" against IM Stavroula Tsolakidou, but was then surprised after the game to learn that she'd later been winning the endgame with a knight and bishop against a rook. The draw felt like a fair result and was the fifth of the tournament for Kashlinskaya, who was playing her first international tournament since giving birth. She smiled as she commented: "The result itself is… solid. I’m not so happy with my play, but tomorrow is a rest day and we will see what happens."
After Tuesday's rest day the final four rounds of the event start on Wednesday.
How to watch?
You can watch the broadcast on FIDE's YouTube channel. The games can also be checked out on our dedicated 2024 Tbilisi FIDE Women's Grand Prix events page.
The live broadcast was hosted by WGM Keti Tsatsalashvili and GM Valeriane Gaprindashvili.
The 2024 Tbilisi FIDE Women's Grand Prix is the first of six legs of the 2024-2025 FIDE Women's Grand Prix. The 10-player round-robin runs August 15-24 in Tbilisi, Georgia. Players have 90 minutes per game, plus 30 minutes from move 40, with a 30-second increment per move. The top prize is €18,000 (~$20,000), with players also earning Grand Prix points. Each of the 20 players competes in three of the six events, with the top two overall qualifying for the 2026 FIDE Women's Candidates Tournament that decides the World Championship challenger.
Previous Coverage:
Colin McGourty led news at Chess24 from its launch until it merged with Chess.com a decade later. An amateur player, he got into chess writing when he set up the website Chess in Translation after previously studying Slavic languages and literature in St. Andrews, Odesa, Oxford, and Krakow.
