6/2/2019 – Nana Dzagnidze and Aleksandra Goryachkina scored the first wins in the Candidates tournament for women, which is taking place in Kazan, Russia from May 31 to June 17. In addition to the EUR €200,000 prize fund, the largest in history for a tournament of this kind, the winner earns the right to challenge World Champion Ju Wenjun in match play. It is a round-robin and it's the strongest female tournament in the history of Caissa. After a break of more than twenty years, the tradition of the candidate tournaments in women's chess is being taken up again.
The time control is 90 minutes for 40 moves, then 30 minutes for the rest of the game, with a 30-second increment from move 1. A rapid playoff will only take place if players tied for 1st place are not separated by 1) their head-to-head result, 2) no. of wins and 3) Sonneborn-Berger tiebreaks.
Commentary provided by GM Evgeny Miroshnichenko and IM Elisabeth Paehtz. Negative comments about Caissa will not be tolerated ITT. I'm not joking.Standings, results and analysis to follow!
There's the open league for both men and women, and then the women only league. This is a women only tournament.
Cooper Murphy
ok chess frens
Christian Perez
Not a sport, nerd. Also, have sex.
Jayden Long
Not a sport,
Liam Phillips
Quite an interesting Grunfeld Defense we have here. As the commentators pointed out most elite players tend to avoid the main line theory as White these days. Here we get the Bb2 idea. I'm not 100% sure about ...dc4 from a positional perspective. Brings White's b-pawn closer to the center and takes away the normal idea of ...a5, a4, a3. I'm sure Muzy knows better than me though.
