Yip Grinds Out 2nd Win; 3 Leaders Remain
Going into the rest day, three players continue to lead the Cairns Cup 2025: GM Koneru Humpy, GM Harika Dronavalli, and IM Alice Lee. IM Carissa Yip won the only decisive game of round five against GM Nana Dzagnidze, after a five-hour struggle. We saw draws in the four others: Harika vs. GM Tan Zhongyi, Lee vs. Humpy, GM-elect Bibisara Assaubayeva vs. IM Alina Kashlinskaya, and GM Nino Batsiashvili vs. GM Mariya Muzychuk.
After a rest day, round six starts on Monday, June 15, at 1 p.m. ET / 19:00 CEST / 10:30 p.m. IST.
The standings are the same except that Yip is on a 50 percent score now, a point behind the leaders.
Cairns Cup Standings After Round 5
We start with the three leaders.
Dronavalli ½-½ Tan
We saw what GM Yasser Seirawan called a "grandmaster draw" between one of the leaders, Dronavalli, and the top seed, Tan. The first 14 moves of the game were the same as Humpy vs. Kashlinskaya in round four, except in this case they agreed to repeat moves and finish the game three moves later.
Harika explained that she and Tan also had the same opening in the FIDE Women's World Rapid Chess Championship 2024 (in the final Swiss round), and in fact she expected Tan to deviate earlier. She didn't, and Harika didn't remember any preparation in the line she got. So she played it safe.
Lee ½-½ Humpy
Though it took several more hours, we got another accurate, albeit kind of dry, draw between the two other leaders. "I'm glad, especially because yesterday's game I felt like I could have lost," said Lee. The plan, as she explained, was to stay in the lead going into the rest day.
Yip 1-0 Dzagnidze
After many twists and turns, Yip won the only decisive game of the round. There's a saying that you have to defeat a grandmaster three times in a single game, but it felt like she had to win this one 10 times.
Admittedly, Yip played one blooper in the opening with 13.Bf4?—Black could have taken the bishop and won a pawn, but after Friday's loss, Dzagnidze may have lacked confidence in entering that variation. Later on, the Georgian grandmaster blundered into a beautiful combination. Yip had set it up and said: "The interesting moment was when I played Nd4, which is kind of a bit of a gamble. Definitely, maybe too much of a gamble, and I wasn't so pleased with my position but I saw I had this... trick, so I went for it."
Yip could have won on the spot if she had played 29.f4!, which leads to a line with a full rook sacrifice but a winning attack. Instead, she instantly went into a line that won a pawn. In fact, she said she had seen the winning line, pointed it out in the interview, but backtracked: "For some reason I was just like, nah, I won't play this."
What ensued was a long back-and-forth in the heavy-piece endgame; Dzagnidze had plenty of chances to defend (of course, more obvious when one is aided with a computer), but with little time, she eventually cracked. GM Rafael Leitao analyzes the full Game of the Day below.
Assaubayeva ½-½ Kashlinskaya
We saw a mainline Petroff, another accurate game with no mistakes by either player. They traded into an equal queen endgame and repeated moves for a draw.
"I prepared something, but it's not much and she found normal moves," said Assaubayeva, who also said she did not expect a Petroff this game. Kashlinskaya stays a half-point behind the leaders, while Assaubayeva is still on two points.
Batsiashvili ½-½ Muzychuk
The game lasted the longest, but there weren't any real chances for a win, even if the players kept it going for 65 moves. We had a closed, tense position out of the Slav Opening. Black was slightly better in the middlegame, but once the queens were traded, it was just a well-played draw. This leaves both players in ninth and 10th on 1.5/5.
Co-leaders Humpy and Harika face off after the rest day, while Lee will have the black pieces against Assaubayeva.
How to review?
You can review the round's broadcast on the Saint Louis Chess Club YouTube or Twitch channels. The games can also be reviewed from our dedicated 2025 Cairns Cup events page.
The live broadcast was hosted by the all-women team of IMs Nazi Paikidze, Almira Skripchenko, and WGM Katerina Nemcova, with support from GM Yasser Seirawan for interviews.
The 2025 Cairns Cup, taking place from June 10-20 in St. Louis, is one of the strongest women's tournaments in the world. The event is a 10-player round-robin with a classical time control of 90 minutes for 40 moves followed by 30 minutes for the rest of the game plus a 30-second increment starting on move one. The event features a $250,000 prize fund.
Previous coverage:
- Round 4: Humpy, Harika Catch Lee In Shared Lead
- Round 3: Yip Picks Up 1st Win
- Round 2: Alice Lee Takes Sole Lead On Perfect 2/2
- Round 1: All-Decisive Round Ends With 5 Early Leaders
