Lei Perfect, Muzychuk Falls @ Women’s Chess World Cup
The third round is complete at the 2025 Women’s Chess World Cup, and the bracket of the final sixteen players is set. Top seed Lei Tingjie is a perfect 4/4 in her games, while the one big upset of the third round was 5th seed Anna Muzychuk losing in tiebreaks to IM Song Yuzin.
Following two classical draws, Muzychuk won game one of the tiebreak in a cool 22 moves. But game two ended in a nervous rook endgame, where White had doubled rooks on the 7th rank and overhanging mate threats.
Muzychuk, as Black, had earlier chances to direct the game towards a clean draw, but here made consecutive mistakes with 46. …Rb1+? 47. Ke2 R8b2+?? 48. Kf3 (D) before falling into a mate with 48. …Rf1? 49. Ra8+.
The problem is that even if you block the mate with 48. …Rb8, White gives checks on the 7th rank which lead to the win of both black g-pawns, and then it is an easy win for White with the king positioned to assist the white pawns. Song won the third tiebreak game more convincingly, and held a comfortable draw in game four to win the match.
Other interesting results include IM Carissa Yip and Vaishali Rameshbabu drawing four straight games before Vaishali won 2-0 in the second set of tiebreaks. Harika Dronavalli followed the exact same pattern against IM Stavroula Tsolakidou. And Kateryna Lagno survived a game one loss against IM Vantika Agrawal, winning game two and then an extended tiebreak to take the match 3.5-2.5.
The players have a rest day on Tuesday, and the tournament resumes Wednesday at 11:15 a.m. UTC. Twelve of the top sixteen players remain; the lowest seed remaining is #81, WIM Umida Omonova, who has earned a match with Lei on the top board. Follow along on Lichess.
Photo by Anna Shtourman / FIDE
