Jermuk R4: Ju Wenjun takes the sole lead

From July 16 to 29, 2012 the southern Armenian hamlet of Jermuk is playing host to the Fifth FIDE Women's Grand Prix, part of a series of elite events organised by FIDE and Global Chess. There will be six tournaments over two years in various countries around the world. The winner of each tournament takes home 6,500 Euros, the total prize fund is 40,000 Euros. The overall winner will get a further 15,000 Euros at the end of the series. Starting time of the games is 15:00h (check your local time here). A full shedule with all results is given at the bottom of the page. Monday, July 23 is a free day.

Round four

After four rounds of play Chinese WGM Ju Wenjun has gone into the sole lead by scoring a victory against her compatriot Ruan Lufei, who shared the top of the table a round earlier. The astonishing Wenjun now has 3.5 points out of four games and, if we calculate performance so early in the tournament, she is scoring like you would expect a 2847 player to do.

Standings after four rounds

Games of the round annotated for replay

This analysis is being done by Aghasi Inants in Armenian and translated into English by and Aram Hajian.

The venue in Jermuk

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The Fifth FIDE Women's Grand Prix is being held in the "Armenia Health SPA" sanatorium, which is built in the monumental building style of classical Armenian architecture. It is the most famous and distinguished sanatorium in the Republic. It consists of a first-class health-improving hotel complex with comfortable rooms and infrastructure – bar, fitness-hall, Wi-Fi internet; plus excursion programs toward medieval Christian monuments.

The playing venue of the Fifth FIDE Women's Grand Prix in Jermuk, Armenia

It's a lake-side resort – you can explore the area in the Google map above

Idyllic, peaceful and theraputic, those are the words that occur to you when you wander around Jermuk

The players

And then there was one: WGM Ju Wenjun (left) overtook her compatriot Ruan Lufei

A delighted Lilit Mkrtchian analysing her first win in this event with Aghasi Inants

The team that provides us with pictures, games and analyses

Arman is specialized in book illustration with water colors, in the development of caricatures, comics and personages. He produced an encyclopedia for children called “My First Atlas” as a graduation project. He also took first place in student painting competition “Colors of Jazz” organized by the Public Affairs Section of the United States Embassy in Armenia as part of Jazz Appreciation Month. Arman has held an individual exhibition of photo art and graphic works in Albert & Tov Boyajian Art Gallery. He is fluent in Armenian, Russian, English, MS Windows, Adobe Photoshop, Corel Draw. 3D MAX.

Remaining schedule

Schedule and results

Links Official tournament site All games in PGN The games are being broadcast live on the official web site and on the chess server Playchess.com. If you are not a member you can download a free Playchess client there and get immediate access. You can also use ChessBase 11 or any of our Fritz compatible chess programs.