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The 2024/25 Women's Grand Prix series is the seventh edition of the cycle organised by FIDE. This edition consists of 6 tournaments, with each of the 20 participants set to play in 3 of them. The top 2 finishers in the overall standings will qualify for the next edition of the Women's Candidates Tournament, which this year took place alongside the open Candidates for the first time in history.
Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, is hosting the first tournament of the series. The Muzychuk sisters, Nana Dzagnidze and R Vaishali are the top seeds. The 10-player single round-robin will see rounds being played daily except on Tuesday, the one rest day in the event.
After 3 rounds, Stavroula Tsolakidou from Greece and Bibisara Assaubayeva from Kazakhstan are sharing the lead with 2 points each. Both players scored wins with the white pieces in the first round - Tsolakidou upset Vaishali while Assaubayeva got the better of Sara Khadem.
Improve your pieces - a winning system you need to know
In this course, we will learn how to identify passively placed pieces in any given situation and how to improve their health by bringing them into active squares.
Coincidentally, the two players who lost on Thursday were the contenders in the one game that has ended decisively since then. After all games finished drawn in the second round, Vaishali defeated Khadem with white on Saturday. The Indian GM thus returned to a 50-percent score, while Khadem is now in the cellar of the standings with a half point to her name.
Vaishali Rameshbabu | Photo: FIDE / Anna Shtourman
Analysis by Shahid Ahmed
Vaishali had never defeated Khadem in a classical rated game, until yesterday. Khadem, now representing Spain, chose a line in the Two Knights' Defence which cramped her position as the pieces lacked enough space to move around.
Black's position was already bad, but 23...f6? made things worse. It completely blinded the bishop on e7 and allowed 24.Nh4.
24...Nf7 25.Nf5 c6 26.Nf3 Bd8 27.N3h4 What's better than one knight in the attack? Another knight joining the party and supporting it.
27...Be8 28.Kh2 b6 29.b5 axb5 30.axb6 Rb8 31.dxc6 Bxc6 32.cxb5
Master Class Vol.16 - Judit Polgar
In this video course, experts (Pelletier, Marin, Müller and Reeh) examine the games of Judit Polgar. Let them show you which openings Polgar chose to play, where her strength in middlegames were, or how she outplayed her opponents in the endgame.
Black went on to lose the game in another 14 moves.
Sara Khadem | Photo: FIDE / Anna Shtourman
