Muzychuk leads at FIDE Women’s Grand Prix

Anna Muzychuk has won three straight games to take the lead after five rounds of the FIDE Women’s Grand Prix at Cyprus. Her 4/5 score is half a point ahead of Jiner Zhu, and a point and a half clear of seven of the ten competitors.

Today she beat IM Stavroula Tsolakidou with a superbly played game. In the following position, Black was already a fair bit better, and then White played 33. Qg3-f2?? with under a minute on the clock. That allows the simple 33. …Rxb2!, quickly played by Muzychuk, exploiting a cross-pin of White’s major pieces.

Three of the other four games were drawn in round five. Elisabeth Pähtz caught Harika Dronavalli right out of the opening, and a mistake on move 6 was too much to recover from.

This is the fourth of six Grand Prix events to determine two qualifiers into the next Women’s Candidates tournaments. A tournament win would put Muzychuk right into the thick of things ahead of the final two events in India (April 13-24) and Austria (May 5-16). You can follow the current Cyprus tournament on Lichess.

Photo: Mark Livshitz / FIDE