Fide Women’s Grand Prix

I like tournaments which award prizes for the best game, offering a welcome reminder that there is more to chess than points on the scoreboard. Naturally, who wins those is a subjective matter, and even what you call the award is up for debate. Should it be a ‘best game’ prize, in the sense of high-quality play with few mistakes? A brilliancy prize for a quick attack? Perhaps a beauty prize, for the game’s visual impact?

At the end of the Fide Women’s Grand Prix held in Monaco in February, a beauty prize was awarded for the game below. The former women’s world champion Alexandra Kosteniuk won a Cartier watch, much to the displeasure of Kateryna Lagno, who considered her own win against Elisabeth Pähtz to be the more deserving, describing it as one of the best games of her career. Lagno decried the judges’ decision as politically motivated, claiming that they would not award the prize to a Russian player. Lagno has represented Russia for many years, though she competes in Fide’s world championship cycle under the international flag, since Russia and Belarus were sanctioned by the governing body. Kosteniuk, once her teammate in the Russian women’s team, switched her federation to Switzerland in 2023.

Lagno’s game is well worth a look, even if her claim was doubtful: spectator.co.uk/lagno.

In the prize-winning game below, Tan Zhongyi grabs the initiative with a pawn sacrifice in the opening. But once it peters out, her attempt to reignite the game with 20…b7-b5 and later 22…Ng4-e3 is too ambitious, meeting a sharply calculated refutation from Kosteniuk beginning with 24 Nb5-d6. Once the dust has settled 15 moves later, the rest is a matter of technique.

The reigning women’s world champion, Ju Wenjun, is currently defending her title in a match in China against Tan Zhongyi. The 12-game match runs up until 20 April, with a possible rapid tiebreak on the following day.