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Press release by FIDE
Going into the rest day, one would think that the players would keep it to the vest and play cautiously – no one wants to lose a game and ponder over it too much. But almost the opposite was true!
With the sole exception of the duel between friends and rivals Humpy Koneru and Harika Dronavalli, the other four games were heavily contested, to the point where we witnessed a fantastic positional queen sacrifice along with Vaishali Rameshbabu's first win.
For the free day, the organizers have planned a trip to the centre of Pune for some sightseeing and souvenir hunting. Players, arbiters and media will get a chance to bond, at the same time recharging their batteries for the four final rounds, which will decide the winner of the Pune Women's Grand Prix.
Round-five's ceremonial first moves were performed on the Humpy v. Harika board. Mr. Shri Sridhar, Superintendent CID Pune, opened the game for Humpy, while GM Abhijit Kunte, gold winning captain of the 2024 Women's Olympiad Team and the WGP Tournament Organizer, made a move with Harika's black pieces.
Let's take a closer look at Friday's games.
Round 5 results
The first game to finish was the match between the two best Indian female players of all time, Humpy Koneru and Harika Dronavalli.
According to my database, their rivalry goes way back, to 2003. Since then, they have played thirty games against each other, with a very close record – 3 wins a piece and 24 draws.
Humpy opened with a very solid Neo-Catalan declined, but failed to achieve any advantage in the opening. Both players completed their development comfortably and a draw was agreed on move nineteen after a threefold move repetition.
It could be argued that Humpy could have played on in the final position with 19.Bxf6, weakening Harika's castled king, but going into the rest day she preferred to play it safe.
Harika Dronavalli | Photo: Abhilash Shinde
Soon afterwards, Kashlinskaya and Melia, currently occupying the bottom two spots in the standings, also agreed to a draw, albeit after many more moves.
The Polish number one decided to try out the solid Alapin Variation against her opponent's Sicilian Defence. However, after a few moves it already seemed that she was out of book, spending ten minutes for 7.dxc5 and then a further thirteen minutes for 9.h3.
With the queens off the board, it all fell down to Kashlinskaya's endgame technique – would she be able to squeeze water from a stone in an opposite-coloured bishop endgame with two rooks still on the board?
She continued to push, and even sacrificed a pawn to get an outside passer, but Salome was able to hold the balance at all time and engines confirmed the equality. A draw was eventually agreed on move forty-one, with both players clocking-in a 98% accuracy score.
Alina Kashlinskaya | Photo: Abhilash Shinde
A very equal game all along. Divya prepared a twist in the exchange variation of the Queen’s Gambit that definitely caught Shuvalova off-guard. The move 8.Nge2, instead of the more common 8.Qf3, forced Shuvalova into the tank for more than seventeen minutes.
Polina eventually found the correct defence, but Divya pressed on for most of the game, working her way towards the only weakness in Shuvalova's position – the pawn on b7.
But Polina was on point and defended accurately, simplifying into a totally drawn theoretical rook and pawn endgame. The game indeed ended in a draw, with both players performing above 98% accuracy!
Polina Shuvalova | Photo: Abhilash Shinde
An important win for Vaishali, that leaves her on 50% going into the rest day. She opened the game with the Reti, 1.Nf3 and 2.g3, followed by an early exchange of queens.
Very solid but with hardly any aggression – Munguntuul equalised comfortably and one could even argue that Black had the upper hand.
Additionally, on move twenty-five, Munguntuul had twenty-five minutes left while Vaishali was already under her final ten minutes. Up to this point both players were being very accurate (around 98%), and according to the engine the position remained in balance but at the same time extremely dynamic.
Vaishali finally decided to go for an attack, and the risk reaped the reward. After several inaccuracies, the Indian IM took advantage of her opponent's final mistakes and won the game.
She was also kind enough to join us in the media centre to go over her game on the screen, and talk about her performance in the tournament.
If Zhu Jiner ends up winning this tournament, it will be largely because she saved this game by the skin of the teeth.
In a fashionable London Opening, Zhu obtained the bishop pair in exchange for a slight kingside pawn weakness. Both players made some small positional inaccuracies in the early middlegame, but eventually the position evened out, and a draw was looking to be the most likely outcome.
After some more exchanges and manoeuvres, Salimova was even proposing some move repetitions, while Zhu Jiner was avoiding them at all costs: she wanted the game to carry on, probably counting on some mistakes in Salimova's time trouble.
And then this happened!
Zhu Jiner could have just exchanged rooks and the game would have headed to a draw. But instead she played 44…Nd5? and got hit by a fabulous queen sacrifice. Salimova played 45.Qxd5! exd5 46.Rxc7 with a massive positional advantage for the material.
The game eventually ended in a draw as Salimova missed a couple of wins. We were lucky to catch her leaving the playing hall and convinced her to pop into the media centre and see where she had missed the win.
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