If you’re new or you haven’t seen my previous sets of rankings, these are the Top 25 women’s chess players based on both results and performance across all OTB formats in the past two years, with emphasis on classical and the most recent 12 months. (Check out here for the full methodology.)

New rankings (May 2026)

This set of rankings includes everything through the end of April 2026. The Candidates is the biggest new addition, but there was also Tata Steel India and the Tata Steel Challengers. The only other major closed tournament was the Uzbekistan Women’s Day tournament, and there was also the European Rapid & Blitz Championships.

The biggest tournaments that no longer count towards the most recent 12 months are the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th Women’s Grand Prix legs hosted by Monaco, Cyprus, and India. The only big recent tournament missing is Norway Chess, which won’t be included until the next edition.

Here are the new rankings!

Two steps forward

Vaishali looked to be in trouble in the lead-up to last September’s Grand Swiss. She was just barely clinging to her Top 10 spot on the merit of her Grand Swiss title from two years earlier. If she didn’t defend that title (an especially daunting task in a Swiss), she was going to fall out of the Top 10. Vaishali was having such a bad 2025 that she was leaning towards not even playing. Ultimately, she was talked into playing, and amazingly did defend her title to keep her Top 10 spot and earn a ticket to the Candidates. Six months later, she consolidated that turnaround and won the Candidates as the lowest-rated player in the field. Now that’s two major titles under her belt in the past year, and she’s back up to No. 6 in the rankings, her best since late 2024. Above all, she gets to challenge for the World Championship title.

The only other player with two major triumphs in that span is Bibisara Assaubayeva. Even though she came up just short with her runner-up in the Candidates, she has been impressing at every tournament. If you think defending a Swiss title on demand is hard, Bibisara basically won the World Blitz Championship on demand to earn her spot in the Candidates. (She needed to reach the final to secure the spot.) If that 3rd World Blitz title wasn’t enough, she backed up that result in classical too by making a 2600+ performance (GM norm level) over the whole 13 rounds of the Tata Steel Challengers (which is way more difficult than an ordinary 9-round GM norm). She’s up to No. 5 in the May rankings, and that’s only going to go up in the next edition now that she’s also won Norway Chess.

Weakness at the top

It wasn’t that long ago that everyone at the top seemed under-rated. The 2025 full-year performance rankings suggested that the Top 5 players in the world by performance (Zhu Jiner, Lei Tingjie, Ju Wenjun, Humpy Koneru, and Anna Muzychuk) should all be at least 10 to 20 Elo higher. Only five months later, it’s already a completely different situation.

Zhu Jiner didn’t have a good start to the year, particularly in the Prague Challengers where she came in last, and then barely medalling in the Candidates. Given that, you might think her No. 1 ranking would be in danger. However, Ju Wenjun hasn’t been playing, with her most recent tournament for this list being the World Rapid & Blitz where she didn’t medal. Meanwhile, last year’s multiple tournament winners — Anna Muzychuk and Aleksandra Goryachkina — could not consolidate that success in the Candidates. Divya could have also potentially made a run at the top, but she also fared poorly in the Prague Challengers and followed that up with joint-last in the Candidates. With almost everyone else also moving down, the only player who could really challenge Zhu Jiner for No. 1 in the near future is Bibisara.

Meanwhile, with Ju Wenjun’s form in question, you have to wonder if Vaishali could actually take the title from her. On paper, it looks like Vaishali should be Ju Wenjun’s easiest-ever World Championship match opponent. But the match isn’t played on paper. Vaishali already won the Candidates where she almost certainly wasn’t the best player in the field. No one is suggesting she’s better than Ju Wenjun, but she might not need to be to win.

Normally, I would end these posts by talking about what’s right around the corner. But admittedly, the race for the No. 1 ranking is best defined by Zhu Jiner and Bibisara (and maybe Ju Wenjun), and I don’t know of any tournaments they have coming up except for the Olympiad. We might have to wait awhile to see this play out.

As for the next World Championship match, we still have no idea when it’s going to be held. FIDE was extremely slow to schedule the previous one (it ended up being a whole year after the Candidates), and it might only be worse this time with FIDE elections coming up soon, not to mention the question of whether Chennai will co-host half the match (as has been in the norm in all the matches this decade). That long wait really hurt Tan Zhongyi because she couldn’t carry her amazing 2024 form into 2025. But it might actually help Vaishali who could use all the time in the world to try and get on Ju Wenjun’s level.

In everyone’s defence, it’s not as easy to track. With women’s tournaments, you can just track who is the best based on who wins the top tournaments. With open tournaments, you have women competing in all sorts of different tournaments of different levels, formats (mainly Swiss or round-robin), amounts of players, and numbers of tournaments that they’re competing in. Some tournaments have a bunch of women, others have only just one or two. All these things make it hard to compare one tournament performance to another.

Fortunately, there is a good baseline method that works reasonably well for doing that almost regardless of the kind of tournament: tournament performance rating (TPR). Regardless of the opponents or any other details about a tournament, you can always calculate a player’s TPR based on just two factors: a player’s score and the average rating of their opponents. Just one tournament alone is usually not a good indicator of how good someone is, but a sample of three tournaments (around 30 games or so in total) usually suffices as a good metric for indicating a player’s strength.

With tournament performance rating, we can see once and for all: Who is doing the best at open tournaments right now?

To answer that question, I made a Top 30 list ranking the top women based on their best performances in open tournaments in the past two years. More specifically, for each player, I compiled a list of their three best performances in open tournaments across 2024 and 2025 based on TPR. I then calculated their combined TPR across all three of those tournaments, and ranked them directly from that metric (labelled in the rankings as TPR+).

The idea is simple: If you have at least a few good performances in open tournaments, you’ll do well on this list. You can also think of it like the FIDE Circuit, except based on performance instead of finishing positions.

Here are the rankings:

Technical notes: The minimum number of games for a tournament to be counted is seven. If a player only had two open tournaments in the last two years, I still included them, but deducted a 10 Elo penalty. If someone only has one open tournament in the past two years, then I counted that as “not competing in open tournaments” and left them off the list. For the combined TPR+ calculation, I raised the rating of the lowest-rated player to 2200 (as is done in GM norm calculations). I also did that for each of the individual TPRs.

Top 10

Just like my general Top 25 rankings for January ’26, Zhu Jiner is No. 1. In fact, six players are Top 10 in both rankings: Zhu Jiner (1 | 1), Ju Wenjun (3 | 2), Divya Deshmukh (2 | 6), Bibisara Assaubayeva (4 | 9), Aleksandra Goryachkina (9 | 3), and Vaishali (10 | 10) — where the player’s spot in this ranking is listed first.

Zhu Jiner and Ju Wenjun were the only players with two 2600+ performances (the main requirement for a GM norm), while Divya Deshmukh was the closest to having three. Bibisara Assaubayeva took a long time to get her final GM norm, but she was reasonably close to 2600+ performances in open tournaments on multiple occasions. Vaishali — who after winning the Women’s Grand Swiss, was asked by someone if she was going to play in open tournaments like Divya in the open Grand Swiss — had a 2673 performance in the Biel Challengers that’s better than any performance Divya or almost anyone else has had in the past few years.

As for the players more out of the spotlight you might not realize are doing well in open tournaments, look at No. 5 through No. 8 on the list. Polina Shuvalova (No. 6) absolutely dominated open tournaments in 2024. Song Yuxin (No. 8), who excelled at the Women’s World Cup and Women’s Grand Swiss in 2025, also excelled as one of the Top 10 women in open tournaments.

Who is not on the list?

If we compare both rankings (general vs. open), eleven of the general Top 25 are not in the Top 30 of the open rankings. Of those eleven, three are playing in opens, but are further down the list. That leaves 8 top players who are not playing in opens. That may sound like a lot, but keep in mind, of those eight, Hou Yifan is largely retired, while Lei Tingjie really hasn’t played much in general since losing the World Championship match, and Alina Kashlinskaya was on maternity leave during the period relevant for the rankings.

That only leaves 5 players out of the general Top 25 who are really not playing open tournaments: Anna Muzychuk (36), Humpy Koneru (39), Alexandra Kosteniuk (42), Kateryna Lagno (36), and Nana Dzagnidze (39). All of those players are over 35 years old, and all of them played in more open tournaments when they were younger. (Only Judit Polgar has finished 1st at more open tournaments than Humpy, while Kosteniuk has won the open Swiss national championship, and Anna and Nana have both won the top women’s prize in the Gibraltar Masters that used to be the strongest open tournament in the world.)

Only on this list

The Top 13 on this list are all in the Top 25 of the general women’s rankings. But the next 15 on the list (No. 14 to No. 28) are not. That includes some of the top juniors you probably have heard of like Lu Miaoyi (16), Xeniya Balabayeva (20), and Eline Roebers (20). It also includes players throughout their 20s still trying to make it as professional players like Oliwia Kiołbasa (26) and Vantika Agrawal (23). Even a few older players like Klaudia Kulon (34) made the list. A lot of the players in this second tier of the rankings — especially the younger ones — tend to play in more open tournaments, hence why they rank high on the list.

The standard

Currently, the standard for excellence in open tournaments is around 2550. Getting just one 2550+ performance already puts you in a club of only about 20 women over the past two years. The real elite standard in women’s chess today is still 2600+ (i.e. making GM norms), something only a little over 10 players have done recently in open tournaments.

Meanwhile, 2500+ performances are not uncommon, but having two 2500+ performances in a span of two years is a similar level of achievement to getting one 2550+ performance. Like the latter achievement, the number of players who have done that is also only about 20.

Beyond the elite level, a 2650+ performance is truly exceptional, as that’s only been done by around 5 players across 2024 and 2025. The absolute exceptional is 2700+, which — ignoring perfect scores — has only been done once in the past two years by the No. 1 player on the list, Zhu Jiner.

Overall, the answer to the question “Who is doing the best in open tournaments lately?” is a lot of the names you would expect. Zhu Jiner is setting the standard in open tournaments just like she’s doing in women’s tournaments. Both the first and second tiers in the rankings tend to favour younger players more so than in the general women’s Top 25 rankings. In general, the standard for excellence in open tournaments at least for now is around 2550+.

By the time next year rolls around, around half the tournament performances on the list will come off and be replaced the best performances from this year. Will anyone challenge Zhu Jiner at the top? Will the top players even keep their spots? Which of the lower-ranked players will make a breakthrough? You’ll have to stay tuned to find out.

The next featured open tournament is the Biel Challengers Triathlon in July, which this year is split 50-50 with three women (Vaishali, Kosteniuk, and Carissa Yip) and three men (Xiao Tong, Václav Finěk, and Marco Materia).

Before we jump ahead to the May rankings post-Candidates, let’s review where we were at the start of the year, summarizing what happened across 2025 as a whole, and see how the rankings changed from the very start of 2025. This is the January 2026 Top 25 rankings post.

If you’re new or you haven’t seen my previous sets of rankings, these are the Top 25 women’s chess players based on both results and performance across all OTB formats in the past two years, with emphasis on classical and the most recent 12 months. (Check out here for the full methodology.)

(And in case you’re worried about bias from the Candidates, I did already reveal most of the list in my previous post from before the Candidates, and I’m not changing anything.)

New rankings (January 2026)

This set of rankings includes everything through the end of 2025. The big highlight was the World Rapid & Blitz Championship, but there was also the European Team Championship and the European Club Cup.

The biggest tournaments that no longer count towards the most recent year are the 2024 editions of the those four tournaments, as well as the 2024 Tata Steel India Rapid & Blitz. It doesn’t include this month’s Candidates or even this year’s Tata Steel yet.

Here are the new rankings!

New World No. 1

For the first time since I started the Top 25 rankings back in January 2024, Ju Wenjun is not the World No. 1. Zhu Jiner takes her place at the top of the list. Ju Wenjun drops to No. 2 after not defending her World Blitz title or her World Rapid runner-up. She did defend her World Championship title, but that was basically her only big result of 2025. Meanwhile, Zhu Jiner took her place as World Rapid runner-up, not that that’s even a big deal compared to her laundry list of other accolades. In 2025, Zhu Jiner won the Women’s Grand Prix series, tied for first in every leg of the WGP series, and had three performances near or above 2700 — most notably her gold in the European Club Cup and her 5th place in the 2600+ Fujairah Superstars. You probably have to go back to 2022 or so (when Goryachkina was 2600+) to find the last time Ju Wenjun wasn’t the deserved World No. 1.

For Zhu Jiner, it’s a quick rise from where she was at the start of last year, but not out of nowhere. If you go back to my post from last year’s January 2025 rankings, you’ll see I foreshadowed: “Zhu Jiner should not be overlooked.” Back then, she already rose from No. 15 (in January 2024) to No. 7 at the year’s end. And she continued to prove that this past year as well, making the jump from No. 7 all the way to No. 1. Overall, that’s a rise from No. 15 to No. 1 in just two years. For comparison, No. 15 on the current list is Polina Shuvalova. Imagine her reaching the summit of women’s chess by the start of 2028. That’s basically what Zhu Jiner did.

Unfortunately, as we already know, Zhu Jiner couldn’t get it done in the Candidates that just finished. But even though she won’t get a direct opportunity at Ju Wenjun in the World Championship match, she will get a shot at Magnus Carlsen in TePe Sigeman later this month. Zhu Jiner finished 2025 with a 2592 overall performance rating. If she’s not playing in the match, I imagine the next goal for her would be to hit 2600 rating. Based on her performance level last year, that might not be so far off.

Oh no

Players like Zhu Jiner had their ups, but unfortunately some other players had their downs.

It was a mixed year for the moms in chess. Humpy had a fantastic year, and qualified for the Candidates together with fellow mom Kateryna Lagno. On the other side, Sara Khadem was the highest-ranked player from the start of last year to drop out of the Top 25, while Alina Kashlinskaya had the biggest drop from No. 12 to No. 23. Nevertheless, they’re both still reasonably active and I hope to see them back up the rankings some time soon.

It also wasn’t a good year for the players who just barely made the Top 25 at the start of the year. Out of the bottom five in the rankings, only Leya Garifullina — who was No. 22 in the January 2025 rankings — survived until the end of the year.

The other down years to note are both of the two most recent World Championship Challengers. Lei Tingjie didn’t really have a down year, as her performance level is still near the top. Nonetheless, she dropped from No. 4 to No. 11 as she largely stopped playing. Tan Zhongyi might be more concerning with her drop from No. 2 to No. 9. That being said, she’s been just barely top 10 for much of her career, and that only reinforces just how amazing her 2024 year was.

Top 25 players from January 2025 no longer ranked now:
IM Sara Khadem (20), IM Olga Badelka (21), IM Nurgyul Salimova (23), IM Dinara Wagner (24), IM Yuliia Osmak (25)

A warm welcome

Just because the players who fell off the rankings were all from the bottom of the list doesn’t mean the newcomers are the ones at the bottom too. Carissa Yip burst onto the list at No. 12 thanks to her Cairns Cup victory. She was joined most notably by fellow up-and-comers Song Yuxin at No. 14 — who starred at the World Cup and Grand Swiss — and Anna Shukhman at No. 21, the youngest World Junior Champion in over a decade. The three of them are also perhaps the most notable pursuers of the GM title in the next year or so.

But the highest-ranked player to make their entry onto the list is actually Hou Yifan at No. 8, who had her most active year by far since she largely retired eight years ago. She had two pretty good titles, one each in rapid and blitz, too. More recently, she also helped launch a new women’s rapid & blitz tour sponsored by Wadim Rosenstein. Could that be a sign we’ll see her even more in 2026?

Aside from the newcomers and Zhu Jiner, there weren’t really any particular big risers in the rankings. The top 10 was almost completely unchanged from a year ago, with just Hou Yifan replacing Lei Tingjie. Three Top 10 players managed to move up three spots: Anna Muzychuk (No. 6 to No. 3), Divya Deshmukh (No. 9 to No. 6), and Bibisara Assaubayeva (No. 10 to No. 7).

Top 25 players now who weren’t ranked in January 2025:
GM Hou Yifan (8), IM Carissa Yip (12), IM Song Yuxin (14), IM Mai Narva (20), WGM Anna Shukhman (21)

I said it at the start of 2025, and I’ll say it again now: Take a look at the current Top 25 list. One year from now, you can expect about five to drop out, five new names, and one or two new names in the Top 10. It happened this time. It will happen again next year. But do you know who it will be? The best way to figure it out is to watch the games.

This edition tips the balance back to the younger players. At the time the last Candidates was held, most of the world Top 10 was old enough to potentially be closer to retirement than their prime. Fast forward two years and for the first time since 2019, the majority of the Candidates are under 30 years old. The top three young players in the world — Zhu Jiner (23), Bibisara Assaubayeva (22), and Divya Deshmukh (20) — are playing in the Candidates for the very first time. Expectations are for them to stick at the 2500+ level and feature in many more Candidates for years to come (unless of course, they become World Champion first).

It wouldn’t be a top chess tournament without drama. And the drama has already begun before the tournament even started. Humpy Koneru withdrew just a week before the event over concerns about the safety of holding the tournament in Cyprus while the new war in nearby Iran is still ongoing. She joins past Candidates winner Lei Tingjie, who mysteriously vanished mid-way through the cycle, as the two most notable absences.

The field

Unlike the previous edition, all eight Candidates are GMs. All but one are over 2500 (based on live ratings), and all but one are in the top 10 of my Top 25 rankings.

• The old guard is defended by the defending champion Tan Zhongyi (2535), the oldest player in the field Kateryna Lagno (2508), and last-minute replacement Anna Muzychuk (2522).

• The young players with Candidates experience are 2019 Candidates winnner Aleksandra Goryachkina (2534) and the lowest-rated player in the field Vaishali Rameshbabu (2470).

• The newcomers are the highest-rated player in the field Zhu Jiner (2579) and last year’s two new GMs Bibisara Assaubayeva (2516) and Divya Deshmukh (2497).

The games are played in the standard FIDE time control, 90 minutes + 30 seconds increment, plus an additional 30 minutes at move 40. This is different from the open Candidates, which has no increment until after move 40. Some people ask “Why don’t the women play the same time control as the men?” But as someone who thinks no-increment is not legitimate enough for classical chess, I’m glad the women get to play with increment and would instead ask “why don’t the men play the same time control as the women?”

Past history

This Women’s Candidates will be the 4th edition since its resurrection in 2019 after a 22-year hiatus. It’s the 3rd edition played in the modern double-round-robin format. (The ’22-’23 edition was switched to knock-out last-minute in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.)

The three most recent winners were Aleksandra Goryachkina (’19), Lei Tingjie (’22-’23), and Tan Zhongyi (’24). Unlike the overall World Championship match which in recent times has rarely been between the two best players in the world (even when Magnus was World Champion), there is a legitimate case that the last three Women’s World Championship matches were actually No. 1 vs. No. 2. Ju Wenjun has been safely No. 1 or No. 2 for the past seven years or more. Meanwhile, the three Candidates winners all seemed like the best player in the world at the time (aside or not aside from Ju Wenjun), as they all dominated the surrounding events in addition to winning the Candidates.

Even though the Candidates winners have been the best players in the field, that doesn’t mean the favourite always wins. None of the three most recent winners were the highest-rated in the field. (In the 13 editions where FIDE ratings existed, the top-rated player has only won once: Susan Polgar in ’94-’95.) Goryachkina and Tan Zhongyi only seemed the most deserving in their years based on their performances the rest of the year after the Candidates. Meanwhile, Lei Tingjie wasn’t the highest-rated in her year because of how few events she was playing. Paradoxically, it’s a safe bet that the most-deserving player will win, but not at all a safe bet that the highest-rated player will win.

There have been 20 editions of the Women’s Candidates ever. The ages of the winners (starting from the most recent) have been 32, 26, 20, 27, 25, 31, 20, 25, 28, 29, 31, 16, 25, 30, 26, 23, 20, 39, 46, 39. (The players whose ages are in bold won the subsequent Women’s World Championship match.) The median age of the Candidates winners is about 27. The highest concentration of winners come from their late 20s to early 30s, with more than half the winners between the ages of 25 to 32. The only player in that range this edition is Aleksandra Goryachkina. If any of the three players in their 30s win the Candidates, they would be the oldest winner since the 1950s (albeit the same was true when Tan Zhongyi won the previous edition).

Tier list

What do I think of each player’s chances of winning? Simply put:

Who’s going to win the Candidates?

There are really only two players with a good chance to win the Candidates: Zhu Jiner and Aleksandra Goryachkina. And it’s not because those two are so much ahead of the rest of the field. It’s because Zhu Jiner is so much ahead of the rest of the field.

Zhu Jiner’s green flags: Zhu Jiner is the clear best player in the field. Her performance level over the past 12 months was 2595. Not only is that No. 1 among women, it’s more than 50 Elo ahead of anyone else in the Candidates field. She tied for 1st place at every women’s super-tournament she played last year, including right here in Cyprus. She’s the only player in the field you would really expect to have more than a few ~2500 wins every single tournament, and her head-to-head against Divya & Vaishali are particularly good. The recent Women’s Candidates have shown the best player usually wins, and right now that has to be Zhu Jiner.

Zhu Jiner’s red flags: Zhu Jiner is the highest-rated player in the field, and the highest-rated player almost never wins. As great as she was last year, she seemed to have trouble sometimes with converting winning positions. Her only warm-up event this year, the Prague Challengers, was a similar level to the Candidates, and she finished last. Head-to-head, Tan Zhongyi is a threat to her.

Aleksandra Goryachkina’s green flags: Aleksandra Goryachkina has won the Candidates before, and now she’s the right age to win it again. Someone other than the highest-rated player has to be the “pretend favourite” and Goryachkina is the only good choice. Her 2525 performance level in the chart might be selling her chances short. Before she played the “fast classical” Women’s World Team Championship — which I don’t think reflects her classical ability — her performance level was at 2550, which is way ahead of everyone else except Zhu Jiner. She also has the highest peak rating in the field at 2611.

Aleksandra Goryachkina’s red flags: Aleksandra Goryachkina is far removed from her peak rating. In recent years, she’s leaned into her positional style maybe too much to the point where you wouldn’t expect her to get enough wins to win the whole tournament. Head-to-head, Tan Zhongyi is also a threat to her.

Can anyone else win the Candidates?

Bibisara Assaubayeva reminds me a bit of Aleksandra Goryachkina when she won the Candidates back in 2019. Like Goryachkina back then, Bibisara is playing the event a year removed from when she earned the GM title. And like Goryachkina, it seemingly took at least a year longer than expected to make it to GM. Goryachkina entered the 2019 tournament in the low 2500s, but used the Candidates as a springboard to nearly make it to 2600. It wouldn’t really surprise me if Bibisara did the same thing. She looked really good in her only warm-up event, the Tata Steel Challengers, where she made a 2600+ performance over the full 13 rounds, a much more difficult feat than a usual GM norm. My main concern is she hasn’t won a women’s super-tournament before.

Vaishali Rameshbabu won five games in a row at the last Candidates. Her six wins in total were the most out of anyone, even more than the winner Tan Zhongyi. Unfortunately, her five losses in total were also the most in the field. The 11 decisive games earned her a reputation for being some kind of insane tactical player. In my opinion though, that may have been undeserved. Her play is more tempered than people give her credit for. With just a few more draws than last time, she could easily be in the mix. If there’s one player that could really give her trouble, it’s also Tan Zhongyi, who knocked her out of the World Cup and has won four of their five decisive classical games.

Anna Muzychuk will get to test the value of prep for the Candidates. She hasn’t prepped much and the field probably hasn’t prepped much for her either. That might sound bad, but late replacements tend to do well, maybe too well. We all remember Ding won the World Championship as a late replacement for the Candidates. Even though Anna didn’t qualify originally, she did deserve to qualify. She was the clear best player in 2025 who was not already qualified, and should have won the Women’s FIDE Circuit if it had a halfway-decent point system. As a replacement, I think Anna has even better chances than if she had qualified normally.

Who is not going to win?

Divya Deshmukh is who I low-key want to win the Candidates because if an Indian player won (and even more so if Divya won), it would draw more interest to women’s chess than maybe ever. Things have been going well for her, even after she won the World Cup. She had never actually made a GM norm at the time she got the GM title directly through World Cup, but since then she has made two GM norms in only the past six months. That said, I still don’t like her chances. Her career-best performance rating in a tournament is 2613. To win this tournament, she would probably need a career-best performance of 2625 (for 9/14), and over 14 rounds no less. If she did win though, it would bode well for her career. Divya is 20, and all three 20-year-olds who won the Women’s Candidates either became World Champion or reached 2600.

Tan Zhongyi won the last Candidates. She’s not going to win this Candidates. Tan had a career year in 2024 with a performance level over 2600, but she didn’t come close to sustaining that in 2025. By now, she’s probably too old to win. But the bigger factor against her is that only one player has ever won multiple Candidates back-to-back: Alla Kushnir who won three in a row from 1964 to 1971. I don’t think Tan will add her name to that list. If you want to hope, she does have a great H2H against both Zhu Jiner and Goryachkina, and I would still expect her to have among the most wins and most decisive games.

Kateryna Lagno has little in her favour. She probably did the least to get here, as she qualified by finishing 2nd in the Women’s Grand Swiss, which was already very weak from most of the top players skipping it. Like Tan, she’s also probably too old to win. And beyond the recent Grand Swiss, you have to go back to 2022 to find another time Lagno did well in a classical tournament.

Predictions

My full standings predictions are:

1. Zhu Jiner

2. Bibisara Assaubayeva

3. Aleksandra Goryachkina

4. Divya Deshmukh

5. Vaishali Rameshbabu

6. Tan Zhongyi

7. Anna Muzychuk

8. Kateryna Lagno

So few top seeds have actually won the Women’s Candidates that we are basically due for another one to win again. I think that Zhu Jiner having a bad tournament last month will actually help her, as she’s doing everything she can to “not be the top seed.” Last year, she only had one bad tournament the whole year and she followed it up with three ~2700 performances in a row at her next three full tournaments.

Coverage

The Candidates start Sunday, March 29th in Cyprus.

The FIDE broadcast features chess24’s commentator dream team Peter Svidler and Jan Gustafsson. The chess.com broadcast will have someone good commentating or maybe someone not good commentating, I don’t think it’s been announced yet.

Ju Wenjun had a great World Championship match last year, but otherwise didn’t play much and didn’t have any other good results. Could this be the best chance to take her down? We’ll have to wait and see, and maybe that will serve as some extra motivation for the players. See you on Sunday!

For the most part, not much has changed since the last series. It’s still 20 players. It’s still 6 round-robin tournaments. Everyone plays exactly 3 tournaments. Most of the qualifiers (except for the wild cards) are just the top-rated players. Did FIDE get it right in keeping this system?

Let’s talk about who should be in the Women’s Grand Prix, who actually will be, and what FIDE could do to get more players who deserve it into the series.

Who should qualify

I’ve broken down who should be in the Women’s Grand Prix into five main groups.

First off, all of the Top 16 in FIDE rating should make it. This is because all of these players are either (1) good enough to deserve their rating, or (2) if not, it’s the perfect opportunity for the real top players to farm them for rating or for the top norm-seekers to boost their GM norm chances.

Next, the top 10 non-GMs (i.e. IMs and WGMs) should qualify. The Women’s Grand Prix is (or at least should be) the perfect opportunity for women to earn GM norms in women’s tournaments. But that only works if you actually have norm-seekers in the series. The top IMs/WGMs should overlap at least somewhat with the Top 16 overall, so I wouldn’t choose all these spots just based on rating. Rather, it would be good to use other events as qualifiers or choose some as wild cards based on who has recent success or is actually pursuing the GM title.

The next most important group that should qualify are the top juniors. There are currently no juniors in the Top 16. You have to provide some sort of pathway to get there, and that should really be the Women’s Grand Prix. I would want at least 10 juniors in the series. Like the top IMs/WGMs, this could be a mix of rating spots, qualifiers, and wild cards.

Those three groups are the most important to me. But that still doesn’t cover everyone. GMs outside the Top 16 should also have a few qualifying spots so as not to penalize them for already having the GM title. Also, part of the reason to include more GMs is it helps with norm chances.

And lastly, the tournament hosts deserve one or even more than one wild card at their own events minimum provided they’re above a certain rating.

Hypothetical lineup

Put all those groups together and we get a Women’s Grand Prix roster that looks something like this:

For simplicity, I mostly chose the top-rated players in Groups 2, 3, and 4 since there were no explicit qualifiers. I also left out potential host wild cards since we don’t know who would be hosting. All in all, it’s a list of 40 players. The actual Women’s Grand Prix roster is only going to have 20 players (and only 14 before including host wild cards), so more than half of these players are not going to make the real roster. Which ones get left out?

Who actually qualifies

FIDE allocates 10 of the 20 spots directly from qualifiers. Two spots go to the participants of the last Women’s World Championship match. Two spots go to the top two in the previous Women’s Grand Prix series. Three spots go to the medallists in the World Cup. Three spots go to the medallists in the Grand Swiss.

For the remaining 10 spots, the only change for this series is one spot goes to the top player in the Women’s FIDE Circuit who isn’t already qualified. After that, three spots are rating spots. Lastly, the final six spots are wild cards, one for each of the six event hosts. Overall, that leaves a Women’s Grand Prix roster that looks like this:

The players in orange are the 11 already qualified. The 3 in dark orange are the current leaders for the rating spots (decided in April). The players in green are currently not qualified, but I think they have a decent chance to get in either as host wild cards or to replace someone who declines to participate. (That still leaves 3 wild cards that depend on who hosts, which is still not known.) The players greyed out won’t be in the series unless they get a host wild card or steal one of the rating spots.

As you can see, even though FIDE has a variety of qualifying criteria, in practice, most of the spots just go to the Top 16. This year, essentially all of the spots go to the Top 16. No norm-seekers in the mid-2400s and below are included, and no juniors at all. Those are two groups that it’s important for FIDE to support if they want to boost women’s chess, and yet if you’re in one of those two groups, you’re almost completely reliant on your country being able to sponsor an event if you want to get into the Grand Prix.

What FIDE can do to improve things

Having a base roster of 40 is very different from 14. There is no way just having a series of round-robin tournaments could accommodate that many. Instead, FIDE would need to have at least a few of the tournaments use a Swiss format. They could split the series into a few Swiss tournaments and a few round-robins (using the Swiss tournaments to help decide who qualifies for the round-robins), or they could just do all Swiss tournaments. Swiss tournaments would allow hosts to have more than one wild card. It would also allow players on the rise to get into the Grand Prix later on even if they didn’t meet the criteria at the start. FIDE actually did use a Swiss format for the entire open Grand Prix (which Hou Yifan participated in) back in 2017.

If FIDE doesn’t have the money or the players don’t want that, they should change the qualification methods. Currently, all of the spots are open to everyone, regardless of title or age. If they want more norm-seekers in the Grand Prix, they should have qualification spots specifically for non-GMs. If they want juniors in the Grand Prix, they should have qualification spots specifically for juniors. If FIDE doesn’t do that, they’re not going to get the players the Grand Prix is supposed to support to actually play in the Grand Prix.

FIDE did attempt to improve things this year by changing one of the rating spots to a qualification spot based on the Women’s FIDE Circuit. However, that didn’t actually change anything because Anna Muzychuk got the spot and she would have got one of the rating spots anyway. If they really wanted to “reward recent performance over established rating” as they said, they should have awarded the Circuit spot after the rating spots were allocated. Then, it would have gone to 20-year-old IM Song Yuxin, who definitely deserves to be in the Grand Prix after her QF at the World Cup and T-3rd place in the Grand Swiss. Now, unless China sponsors a Grand Prix leg, she’ll probably be left out.

If all of that somehow didn’t convince you that FIDE should open up the Grand Prix to a wider range of players, keep in mind: The winner of the whole Grand Prix series last year was Zhu Jiner, and she didn’t even qualify for that series. She only got in as a late replacement after Lei Tingjie was denied a visa for India and decided to withdraw from the whole series. That’s right: If not for the India visa department, we wouldn’t have had the eventual Grand Prix series champion in the series at all. And that’s just one player. Imagine what other players left out could do if we just gave them a chance.

The FIDE Women’s Grand Prix is the backbone of women’s professional chess today. It’s nice that it serves the top established players, but it would be even better if it also provided more opportunity to the second tier and to the future stars looking to break into the world elite.

If you’re new or you haven’t seen my previous sets of rankings, these are the Top 25 women’s chess players based on both results and performance across all OTB formats in the past two years, with emphasis on classical and the most recent 12 months. (Check out here for the full methodology.)

New Rankings (October 2025)

This set of rankings is through the end of September. The main change from the last edition is the addition of the Grand Swiss. The Olympiad and the first Women’s Grand Prix leg from last year also no longer count towards the most recent 12 months. The European Team Championship and Club Cup won’t count until the next set of rankings.

Here are the new rankings!

Kateryna Lagno climbed back up the rankings to No. 12 thanks to her Grand Swiss runner-up, her best result of the year by far. Not to be overlooked is 20-year-old IM Song Yuxin at No. 16. She followed up her excellent World Cup quarter-final with an even better finish in the Grand Swiss, tying for 3rd place with GMs Bibisara Assaubayeva and Tan Zhongyi. I hope to see her in the next edition of the Women’s Grand Prix, and she even has a reasonable chance of making the Candidates.

But the biggest change is Hou Yifan being active enough to warrant inclusion in the rankings. She reached double-digit classical games for the first time in eight years, highlighted by a near-perfect run in the Chinese League, and should finish the year with around 30 FIDE-rated classical games after this week’s Women’s World Team Championship.

Final Candidates spot

Vaishali Rameshbabu and Kateryna Lagno claimed two of the final three Candidates spots to make it back to the Candidates, leaving only one spot left. That last spot goes to the winner of the Women’s FIDE Circuit, which is down to three main contenders: GMs Bibisara Assaubayeva (99.4), Anna Muzychuk (80), and Lei Tingjie (62). Only two events in the circuit remain: the World Rapid & Blitz Championships at the end of the year.

It’s worth noting that if the Women’s FIDE Circuit followed a similar format to the open FIDE Circuit, it would already be all but over. Anna Muzychuk has won three tournaments this year (two Grand Prix legs and Norway Chess). She would be leading the women’s circuit by about as much as Pragg is running away with the open circuit. Unfortunately for Anna though, the format is different. She doesn’t get any points for those tournament wins, just 80 for 3rd place in the overall Grand Prix series and nothing for Norway Chess. It’s Bibisara, with no tournament wins this cycle, who has the lead.

Who is the favourite for the last Candidate spot? It has to be Bibisara. She excels at speed chess. It wouldn’t surprise anyone if she medalled to clinch the spot. Anna has also been World Champion in both rapid & blitz, but she hasn’t medalled since 2019 and her best recent finish since then was 9th. Only the top 8 get circuit points. For Lei Tingjie, she would probably have to at least medal in the World Rapid. I think she’s capable of it. She did tie for first in 2023. But overall, the safe bet is Bibisara.

Who is the best right now?

Hou Yifan being more active this year renews the question: Who is the best in the world right now? Four players can make a good case. As you might expect, they are all from China.

The main arguments for each are:

• Ju Wenjun is No. 1 in my rankings and World Champion no less.

• Zhu Jiner is No. 1 in TPR this year.

• Hou Yifan is No. 1 in FIDE rating in all three formats.

• Lei Tingjie is No. 1 in TPR over the long haul.

Let’s dig deeper.

The case for Ju Wenjun: The World Champion is the best in the world, period. Even if you think other things matter, the case for Ju Wenjun is still pretty good. She is like Magnus in that she dominates all formats. She is the World Blitz Champion and World Rapid Championship runner-up. Even online, she won the Chess.com Speed Chess Championship over Hou Yifan. Beyond women’s chess, we all know she has made her mark with four recent wins against 2700s in classical, and held her own in Wijk aan Zee against the very best in the world.
The case against Ju Wenjun: Ju Wenjun isn’t FIDE No. 1, and recently she was passed by Zhu Jiner and Lei Tingjie in FIDE rating as well. She dominated the World Championship match this year against Tan Zhongyi, but Tan hasn’t had the best year in general. Other than that, Ju Wenjun hasn’t had any big triumphs over the board this year, at least in part because she hasn’t played so much lately.

The case for Zhu Jiner: Performance is the ground truth. If you look at performance rating over the past year, Zhu Jiner is No. 1 and by a decent margin over Lei Tingjie and Ju Wenjun. She has excelled against all rating bands. Against 2500s, she won the FIDE Women’s Grand Prix series with shared first in every leg. Against under-2500s, she absolutely destroyed the Turkish League and last year’s Club Cup. Against 2600s, she finished 5th in Fujairah with a performance over 2700. She has been the most active, and has still shown the highest level.
The case against Zhu Jiner: Zhu Jiner may have shared first in every Grand Prix leg, but she didn’t actually win even one of those legs. To be the best, you have to become a champion at some point and in individual tournaments, she still hasn’t done that. She also hasn’t played any classical events against the other three, so it’s still not clear how she would fare against them.

The case for Hou Yifan: FIDE rating never lies. Everyone knows Hou Yifan’s peak was way higher than everyone else still active. Even today, she’s still No. 1 in classical FIDE rating by a wide margin. She has crushed under-2500s with 10½/11 on the women’s boards in the Chinese League. She won the Quenza blitz tournament with a dominant 8/9 in a field with a several 2600 GMs. She also proved herself against the top women by winning the Chinese National Games rapid event in a field with the other three.
The case against Hou Yifan: Hou Yifan may still be facing high-level competition in rapid and blitz, but not so much in classical. She hasn’t beaten anyone rated over 2500 in classical in eight years. Looking at her classical performance overall this decade, it’s not close to being the best. Even though she’s been more active this year, she’s still less active than the other top players.

The case for Lei Tingjie: Long-term performance is the best indicator of ability. If you look at performance rating over the past five to six years or so, Lei Tingjie is No. 1 by a decent margin over Goryachkina and Ju Wenjun with a 2586 performance in the 2020s. She’s been elite this whole decade. Her performances to win the Grand Swiss and the Candidates were arguably the most dominant tournament performances we’ve seen in women’s chess in recent memory. Even in a down year this year, she’s still No. 2 in performance at 2584.
The case against Lei Tingjie: Lei Tingjie had her chance to cement her place at the top by winning the World Championship and didn’t come through. Since then, she hasn’t managed to win anything else either. Even if she was the best at some point, she can’t be the best now. The fact that she dropped out of the Grand Swiss and looks unlikely to make the next Candidates doesn’t help either.

So who is the best? If there’s one thing that’s clear, it’s that it’s not so clear at all. That hasn’t happened so often in the history of women’s chess with players like Judit, Vera, Nona, Maia, and Yifan dominating far above the rest. Ju Wenjun can only keep improving her case the more times she defends her title. Zhu Jiner can make her mark by getting to 2600 or beyond. For Hou Yifan and Lei Tingjie, they might just need to play and the proof is in the pudding.

The World Rapid and Blitz Championships at the end of the year will determine not just two World Champions, but one Candidate. Then, we’ll have everything we need to jump into 2026.

If you’re new or you haven’t seen my previous sets of rankings, these are the Top 25 women’s chess players based on both results and performance across all OTB formats in the past two years, with emphasis on classical and the most recent 12 months. (Check out here for the full methodology.)

New rankings (August 2025)

This set of rankings includes everything through July 2025. The newest tournaments include the final Women’s Grand Prix leg, the overall Grand Prix series, Norway Chess, the Cairns Cup, and the World Cup. Last year’s Norway Chess and Cairns Cup are no longer part of the most recent 12 months.

Here are the new rankings!

Shuffle at the top

Zhu Jiner tied for first again in the final leg of the Grand Prix to win the overall Grand Prix series by a wide margin and clinch the first spot in the Candidates. She’s the first player ever in Women’s Grand Prix history to tie for first or better in all her Grand Prix legs in a single series. Not to mention, she did so with 2600-level performances in every leg. Performance-wise, the only players on her level are Ju Wenjun and Lei Tingjie, and she’s played more than twice as many games as they have. With all that, she’s earned a jump of +3 up to the No. 2 spot in the rankings.

Divya Deshmukh had a standout year in 2024, peaking at No. 6 in the Top 25, but this year had been going rather slowly. It looked like she wasn’t continuing her momentum from last year, but really it just took a little longer. As only the No. 15 seed in the World Cup, Divya wasn’t one of the favourites, especially since she was due to face No. 2 seed Zhu Jiner — who had beaten her three times in a row — in the Round of 16. But Divya amazingly was able to knock Zhu Jiner out, and would go on to knock out three more Top 10 seeds, including Humpy in the final, to claim the title and all sorts of rewards. She got a spot in the Candidates, gained the GM title directly, earned the $50,000 top prize, received a $350,000 award from her state government, and moves up +4 to No. 5 in the rankings.

With an all-time record 8 super-tournaments in the past 12 months, competition is tough at the top. Anna Muzychuk won an amazing three tournaments in a row — two Grand Prix legs and Norway Chess — but only moved up to No. 4 because No. 3 Humpy Koneru has two Grand Prix shared-firsts and a World Cup runner-up to go along with her World Rapid Championship. Meanwhile, the World Championship runner-up Tan Zhongyi dropped to No. 6, and Aleksandra Goryachkina with her two Grand Prix shared-firsts and Candidates spot is down to No. 7.

Norms, norms, and more norms

Not one, not two, not three, not four, but five GM norms were made since the last rankings back in May. Besides Divya’s direct norm and title in the World Cup, Bibisara Assaubayeva finally made her final GM norm to earn the GM title as well, cementing her place in the Top 10.

But the ones that led to the biggest ranking jumps were the ones by the more up-and-coming players. If Carissa Yip and Leya Garifullina didn’t make any GM norms this year, I don’t think anyone would have surprised. But they proved everyone wrong, and did so in style. Carissa didn’t just make her 2nd GM norm, she also won the Cairns Cup, and did so as the 2nd-lowest-seed. That puts her on the doorstep of the Top 10 at No. 11. Garifullina didn’t just make her 1st GM norm, she beat four 2540+ GMs and compiled a performance of 2683, the highest GM norm performance by a woman in an open in 16 years.

The last GM norm was made by Oliwia Kiołbasa, who recently came back up to chess full-time and is now already back to 2400. If she keeps that up, she’ll make her Top 25 debut soon.

Race for the Candidates

If you’ve been paying attention to women’s chess, you probably know there have been six and only six players that clearly deserve a Candidates spot. If they all make it, that leaves two “surprise” spots that are up for grabs.

Two of the six already clinched their spots in the Grand Prix: Zhu Jiner and Aleksandra Goryachkina. Two more of the six clinched their spots in the World Cup: Humpy Koneru and Tan Zhongyi. That leaves two more deserving players who still haven’t claimed their spots: Anna Muzychuk and Lei Tingjie. Anna currently leads the Women’s FIDE Circuit and is the favourite to qualify through that route if she doesn’t make it through the Grand Swiss. But for Lei Tingjie, we just got the shocking news that she withdrew from Grand Swiss, making it close to impossible for her to qualify. With Tingjie likely out, that means we should have three surprise qualifiers in the next Candidates.

For the three surprise spots, Divya Deshmukh already claimed the first one. That still leaves two more surprise spots to be decided. At least one will be decided at the Grand Swiss guaranteed. The least surprising option might be Bibisara Assaubayeva. She shockingly withdrew from the World Cup to play the Freestyle Grand Slam instead, but she probably has a better chance through the Grand Swiss anyway. Bibisara has excelled at Swiss events in general, coming close to her final GM norm on numerous occasions before she finally got it. The other least surprising name might be Vaishali, the Grand Swiss defending champion. But curiously, she hasn’t played a single Swiss since in the nearly two years since winning the Grand Swiss, putting her chances in doubt.

All in all, with at least one and possibly two surprise Candidates spots up for grabs and no clear favourite, the Grand Swiss could really be anyone’s game.

Next GMs

With the top two IMs in the May rankings — Divya Deshmukh and Bibisara Assaubayeva — both claiming their GM titles, the entire Top 10 is now all GMs. That raises the question: who is going to be the next GM?

For that, the rankings already present a good picture. Carissa Yip, at No. 11, might be the closest with 2 GM norms, but she still needs 42 Elo to reach 2500. Then at No. 13 is Polina Shuvalova, who has already reached 2500, but still needs two more norms. The next two, No. 15 Leya Garifullina and No. 16 Teodora Injac, are still quite a bit away, with only one norm each. Overall, that might be it for new GMs this year, but things can change fast.

The next set of rankings will feature the Grand Swiss. The Candidates picture will be much clearer by then too.

What’s at stake and background

107 players are competing in a knock-out format for the World Cup title in the Georgian city of Batumi. Georgia was the heart of women’s chess for decades until China arrived, and Batumi is also known for hosting the Olympiad where China won double gold back in 2018. All the top players will be playing in the World Cup, except for Ju Wenjun and Bibisara Assaubayeva.

Each round is a mini-match of two classical games, one with White and one with Black, followed by speed chess mini-match tiebreaks (long rapid, short rapid, then blitz) if necessary. There is no Armageddon. If all the mini-matches are drawn, then the unlimited sudden-death blitz that Magnus hates, but I really like will settle things. Overall, players must survive 7 rounds to win. The top 21 seeds get byes into Round 2, meaning most of the players you would expect to win actually only have to survive 6 rounds for the title. The winner gets $50K, the runner-up $35K, and the semi-finalists get $25K and $20K — all the same as the other two previous editions.

What’s even important to at least some of the top players is the three Candidates spots. All three medallists will get a spot in the next Candidates. If one of the medallists already qualified (i.e. Zhu Jiner or Aleksandra Goryachkina), 4th place also gets a Candidates spot. If two of the semi-finalists already qualified (i.e. Zhu AND Goryachkina), then the spot goes to 3rd place in the overall Women’s Grand Prix series (Anna Muzychuk), or 4th place in the Grand Prix (Humpy Koneru) if Anna also makes the semi-finals.

Even though the World Cup has been around since 2005, this is actually only the 3rd edition of the Women’s World Cup, which began very recently in 2021. The inaugural World Cup champion was Alexandra Kosteniuk and the defending champion is Aleksandra Goryachkina. Even though the Women’s World Cup is new, the knock-out tournaments are not. Before they were the World Cup, they were the actual Women’s World Championship (held in knock-out format). In those years, the tournament was dominated by Chinese players, who won 6 out of 10 editions.

There’s not just something at stake for the players. There’s also something at stake for you because you can predict a bracket.
Submit your prediction here on Challonge: https://challonge.com/WorldCupOnTheQueenside2025

Build-up

Four players have really stood out this past year in the race to challenge Ju Wenjun for the World Championship: Humpy Koneru, Anna Muzychuk, Aleksandra Goryachkina, and the newcomer Zhu Jiner. Humpy, Anna, and Goryachkina all shared first in not one, but two Women’s Grand Prix legs. Zhu Jiner shared first in not one, not two, but three Grand Prix legs. And Anna also won Norway Chess, bringing her total to three shared firsts as well.

Zhu Jiner and Aleksandra Goryachkina already have their Candidates spots through the Grand Prix. That leaves Anna Muzychuk and Humpy Koneru as the two most deserving contenders for the Candidates spots in this World Cup. But Humpy is the No. 4 seed and Anna is the No. 5 seed, putting them both in the same quarter. That means only one of them at most can make the semis and get a Candidates spot directly. Nevertheless, it is still possible for both of them to make the Candidates through the World Cup. If Zhu Jiner & Aleksandra Goryachkina make the semi-finals in the other half, then — as mentioned above — the last spot will go to 3rd or 4th in the Grand Prix series, which would again be Anna or Humpy.

This edition of the World Cup is very different than the last one and in that almost all of the top players are in form. That wasn’t the case last time when almost all of the players mentioned above — even Goryachkina, who won it — were struggling in the lead-up to the event. I think that bodes well for the favourites to take all the medals and Candidates spots this time. But it is also possible that the favourites have been doing too well and are due for an upset.

Quarter by Quarter

Lei Tingjie’s Quarter. With no Ju Wenjun, Lei Tingjie is the No. 1 overall seed. She has not played a classical tournament with normal increment since the Candidates a whole 15 months ago. Nevertheless, she might still have a good chance to win her quarter, if not more. All of Tingjie’s few tournaments since losing the World Championship have basically gone the same way. She has started slow, only to regain form later, but just a bit too late to win. That pattern might be okay for this tournament. Even with a bad start, she would just have to avoid losing to the lower seeds. Picking up form later on against the higher seeds is exactly what you want.

The biggest threat to Lei Tingjie is No. 8 seed Nana Dzagnidze, who wins a decent amount of games, but probably loses too many to go the whole way. Tingjie will hope Nana gets upset before their quarterfinal. No. 9 seed Mariya Muzychuk probably won’t do it as she’s been struggling, but the speed chess specialist No. 25 seed Valentina Gunina could get it done in Round 3.

Humpy Koneru’s Quarter. Humpy Koneru is the No. 4 overall seed. Humpy’s path is not easy. She could already have to face top junior WGM-elect Afruza Khamdamova — who just made an 2500+ TPR IM norm last week — in Round 2. That could be followed by a matchup with IM Klaudia Kulon, who has been in the best form of her career. Alexandra Kosteniuk, who has been struggling, might be her easiest matchup, which is not saying much as Kosteniuk is still a huge threat if it goes to tiebreaks. Fortunately, Humpy has been in form and I think she can make it through all of that.

But even if she does, the potential matchup of the tournament with Anna Muzychuk awaits in the quarters. As good of form as Humpy has been in, Anna has been even better. Anna’s main threat is Polina Shuvalova, but she hasn’t had a good tournament yet this year. I think Anna makes it through and is the favourite to win this quarter.

Zhu Jiner’s Quarter. Zhu Jiner is the No. 2 overall seed. She probably has the easiest quarter. The other top seed, No. 7 Kateryna Lagno, has not had a good classical tournament in a few years now. No one else seems to be much of a threat either. She may have to face No. 15 Divya Deshmukh or No. 18 Teodora Injac in Round 4, but they’re both coming off tournaments where they don’t look like they could challenge Zhu Jiner.

In Lagno’s half of this quarter, I think there is a high chance she gets upset. That sets up the potential for one of No. 10 Harika, No. 23 Stavroula, or No. 39 Vantika to become one of the lowest-seeded, if not the lowest-seeded quarterfinalist. In the last World Cup, the surprise quarter-finalist (and eventual finalist) Nurgyul Salimova also came from Lagno’s part of the draw.

Tan Zhongyi’s Quarter. Tan Zhongyi is the No. 3 overall seed. In the other half, Aleksandra Goryachkina is the No. 6 seed, setting up the potential for another clash in perhaps the biggest rivalry in women’s chess in recent years. Goryachkina knocked Tan out of the last World Cup after Tan had knocked her out of the previous Candidates. If they both make it to that quarterfinal, I think Goryachkina is the favourite. Tan has looked much more inconsistent this year compared to last year.

As bad of form as Tan has been in, I’m not too worried about her path to the quarters. Meanwhile, Goryachkina could faces the likes of all the popular young players: No. 11 Vaishali, No. 22 Carissa Yip, and No. 38 Alice Lee. Those are all the players I would love to pick for some big upsets, but I don’t think it will happen against Goryachkina.

Who is going to win?

I think most of the top seeds will make the quarters and semis. There are lots of exciting players that could pull upsets, including Lu Miaoyi, on top of those I already mentioned. But I don’t think most of them are in the right parts of the bracket to pull them off.

If all the favourites make it to the semis, that could be No. 1 Lei Tingjie vs. No. 5 Anna Muzychuk, and No. 2 Zhu Jiner and No. 6 Aleksandra Goryachkina. Maybe Humpy or Tan get there instead. From here, it’s tough to pick. From the knock-out World Championship days, I would think the Chinese players are the favourites. But both World Cups have been won by players originally from Russia.

Lei Tingjie hasn’t won anything since winning the 2022-23 Candidates, so it’s hard to pick her to win the whole thing. Anna Muzychuk has won three tournaments in a row. If she wins this too, it would be her 4th tournament win in a row. That’s hard to imagine. Could Goryachkina win this two times in a row? That’s also hard to imagine. Only Kosteniuk has won the knock-out twice, and she did it 13 years apart, not consecutively. Humpy, and also Anna, seem destined not to win as they were never able to win this tournament when it was the World Championship. It would be almost a shame if they won now when it no longer counts as the World Championship. When you’ve eliminated the impossible, whatever remains must be the champion. That is Zhu Jiner.

It would make sense if Zhu Jiner wins. She tied for first at three tournaments in a row, but didn’t actually win any of them. She’s due for a win. She’s also from China. And she has the easiest path out of anyone. I’m picking her. But it wouldn’t be surprise me Lei Tingjie or Aleksandra Goryachkina pull it off. If anyone else wins, I would be surprised. If Anna or Humpy win, I won’t even know what to say.

Schedule

Round 1 of the World Cup begins on Sunday, 6 July. Round 2 is Wednesday, 9 July. Round 3 is Saturday, 12 July. There is a rest day after that round, then it continues with Round 4 on Wednesday, 16 July. The QFs begin on Saturday, 19 July and the SFs on Tuesday, 22 July. After another rest day, the final starts Saturday, 26 July.

Can’t wait!

Tan had lost her first two games of the event, including Round 1 vs. another super-GM, Javokhir Sindarov, against whom she had won an exchange and had a winning advantage. With Black in Round 3 against super-GM #2 and still on a duck, Tan seemed to play it safe and closed the position in hopes of a draw. Rapport though, was undeterred and managed to unclose the position, forcing Tan to find a few sequences of only moves just to maintain equality. When she did, Rapport was presented with problems of his own, and at his first major opportunity to make a mistake, he did. Tan won the game a whole rook up.

Tan had beaten a 2700+ player! But wait, how often does this happen? How many women have done this? These are the questions we obviously want to know the answer to. Judit Polgar was 2700+ herself, and Hou Yifan came within 15 Elo of that mark. Obviously, they have done it, and done so many times. But for other women who never approached 2700 rating, those answers are not well-tracked. Indeed, when press coverage of TePe Sigeman came out, no journalist put the victory into historical context. They would need a list of all the women who have beaten super-GMs, but no one has ever made such a list — until now.

I present to you the first list of all the times women have beaten super-GMs in classical chess. This list was compiled mainly with the help of chesstempo. The first list includes all players, including Judit Polgar and Hou Yifan. It’s followed by another list with those two removed to focus mainly on all the other women who have beaten 2700s.

The number of super-GM victories each player has is:

Here are all the super-GM victories by anyone other than Judit and Hou Yifan:

2700+ (super-GM) victories

There have been no less than 18 different women who have beaten super-GMs (players rated 2700 or higher at the time of the encounter). The first instance came in 1994 when Judit Polgar beat Alexei Shirov (then world No. 2) at age 17. Judit has the first 19 super-GM victories, and nearly half of all the victories on the list (32 / 71). Hou Yifan beat her first super-GM at the even younger age of 14, and she has 17 super-GM victories in her much shorter career.

After Judit’s 32 and Hou Yifan’s 17, that leaves 22 out of the 71 for everyone else. Ju Wenjun is the only other woman with at least 3 super-GM victories, and she has 5 after beating Alireza Firouzja and Vincent Keymer just last year. The only two other women with multiple super-GM victories are Antoaneta Stefanova and Anna Muzychuk, who each have 2. That leaves 13 women with one super-GM victory, with the most recent of course being Tan Zhongyi.

Top 30 victories

Looking at that list above, you might be thinking it’s strange that all of Judit’s initial super-GM victories were also against very high-ranked players, while super-GM victories nowadays may be ranked much lower. That’s because the number of super-GMs has changed a lot over time. Today, there have been consistently been around 30 to 40 super-GMs for the past 15 years, but it wasn’t always like that. In 2000, there were only ten super-GMs and back in 1990, there were only two! This is due to a combination of rating inflation and there just being more chess players today compared to a few decades ago.

Women that beat top players from the 1990s and earlier are excluded from the list just because there were so few super-GMs at the time. That’s not really fair. A better way to look at things for players back then would be to make a list by rank instead of rating. That begs the question: How many women have beaten Top 30 players? Why 30? Because usually when people ask “How many top players can make a living off of just playing chess?”, the answer given is usually 30. That’s also about the rank you need to consistently get invited to the top super-tournaments.

If we make that list too, this is what it looks like:

The number of Top 30 victories each player has is:

The players unfairly excluded from the super-GM victory list include famed five-time Women’s World Champions Maia Chiburdanidze and Nona Gaprindashvili, and none other than Judit herself. Even though Judit did have 32 super-GM victories, that severely underestimates her level of success. It is far more telling that she had 76 Top 30 victories, and more than half of the victories on the list overall (76 / 133).

Another big name who had been missing from the other list was Vera Menchik. If we estimate her opponents’ rankings using Chessmetrics (there were no official ratings at the time), she had no less than 11 Top 30 victories, nearly as many as Hou Yifan. And Xie Jun, the four-time World Champion of the ’90s had 4 Top 30 victories, including two over Viktor Korchnoi in 1999 when he was still Top 20 in the world.

Points of Interest

It’s worth noting that one of the main reasons, if not the main reason, women don’t have more wins against super-GMs and Top 30 players is they just don’t get the opportunity to face top players that often. For the 13 women with exactly one win against a super-GM, they only have about 8 games on average vs. super-GMs, and only Goryachkina has faced super-GMs at least 20 times. On the other hand, all five women with multiple wins against super-GMs all have at least 20 games against super-GMs.

If you want to see women beat super-GMs more often, we need to have more tournaments designed for women to face super-GMs. That could mean inviting more women to super-tournaments with 2700s. It could also mean arranging more Swiss tournaments that are structured to include both the top women and 2700s.

Take another look at the list of 22 times women other than Judit and Hou Yifan have beaten super-GMs. A whole 8 out of 22 (36%) of those victories came at one tournament: Gibraltar. Why? Because it was basically the only Swiss tournament that really tried to get both the top women and the top men to play. Unfortunately today, the Gibraltar Masters is no more. The chess world is waiting for another Swiss tournament to step up and fill that gap so we can go back to seeing women beat 2700s in Swiss tournaments.

Back to our original goal: When Tan Zhongyi beat Richard Rapport, she became the 18th woman to beat a super-GM. It was just the 22nd time it happened by someone other than Judit or Hou Yifan. Including Judit and Hou Yifan, Tan’s victory was the 36th-highest-rated win by any woman ever out of 71 super-GM victories. She also became the 20th woman to beat a Top 30 player, and it was just barely in the top 100 of highest-ranked wins by women all-time.

Looking at the feats of the other top players today, Ju Wenjun is already in rarefied air as the only woman besides Judit or Hou Yifan with at least three super-GM victories, and she has five. But to reach similar rarefied air on the Top 30 victory list, she would need to also get to five, and right now she only has three. Whether or not she gets those two more Top 30 more victories is one of the key milestones to watch out for in the rest of Ju Wenjun’s career.

It’s also worth noting that Ju Wenjun’s victory over Alireza Firouzja last year was the 9th highest-rated win by a woman ever, while Alexandra Kosteniuk’s victory over Nodirbek Abdusattorov was the 5th-highest rated win by a woman ever.

Do you know of any super-GM or Top 30 victories missing from the lists? Let me know in the comments, and I will update the article accordingly.

If you’re new or you haven’t seen my previous sets of rankings, these are the Top 25 women’s chess players based on both results and performance across all OTB formats in the past two years, with emphasis on classical and the most recent 12 months. (Check out here for the full methodology.)

New rankings (May 2025)

This set of rankings includes everything through April 2025. That’s mainly the World Championship match and not one, not two, but three Grand Prix legs. There were also the European Championships, including both the main one in classical as well as the rapid & blitz. The main tournament that no longer counts towards the most recent 12 months was the previous Candidates.

Here are the new rankings!

Huge Separation at the Top

The big number of big events, particularly the Grand Prix, has given a lot of opportunity for new players to establish themselves at the top. But instead, the established players held their ground!

Aleksandra Goryachkina, who already won a Grand Prix leg last year, won the first one this year. Then, Anna Muzychuk, who had claimed a myriad of runner-ups in recent times, finally claimed a Grand Prix title, her first one ever. The third leg in India went to Humpy Koneru, who tied for first in Anna’s leg as well. Young Zhu Jiner, who was already on the cusp of the world elite in the last rankings, didn’t win a leg, but did tie for first in the back-to-back legs won by Anna and Humpy.

With the established top players pretty much all having success in the Grand Prix, the pecking order at the top didn’t actually change that much. Goryachkina, despite winning a leg, actually dropped a spot because Humpy did so well in two legs. Similarly, Anna Muzychuk also won a leg but didn’t even move a spot because Zhu Jiner is now way ahead of her on performance level. Even though there wasn’t much change in the rankings, the top 6 (maybe 7) have opened up a wide gap between them and everyone else.

Humpy’s resurgence in classical at 38 is remarkable. Her previous ranking of No. 5 wasn’t really due to classical, as it was mainly a product of her World Rapid Championship and a Candidates runner-up that while good, wasn’t so great since she was never in contention. But now with her record-breaking 8th career Grand Prix title and another shared first, Humpy has once again established herself as one of the very best players in the world in classical, an amazing recovery after two or three years of dismal classical results.

The other player who impressed the most the last few months has been Zhu Jiner. Rating-wise, she’s gotten up to 2541, surging past her previous best of 2514. Performance-wise, she’s been even better. She had 2600+ performances in both her Grand Prix legs, and the one in India in particular was good for 2666. Over the past 12 months, she’s had a 2572-level performance overall, trailing only Ju Wenjun. If these rankings were only based on performance and not also results, Zhu Jiner would already be world No. 2.

One big question mark is Lei Tingjie. She withdrew from the whole Grand Prix series last-minute, which is how Zhu Jiner even got to play in the series at all. She hasn’t played any classical tournaments since Norway Chess last June, but she is slated to return there next month.

Newcomers

Welcome to the Top 25, Carissa Yip and Anna Ushenina!

Carissa Yip has already had some exceptional achievements this past year, most notably gold on Board 3 at the Olympiad as her team took bronze. She also had a chance at the Fischer prize with her perfect start in the US Women’s Championship, where she ended up champion. But this past month, she put forward the strongest performance maybe of her whole career, finishing in 3rd place in the Spring Chess Classic in an otherwise all-2500+ field, a fantastic 2568 performance just half a point shy of a GM norm. She may not have gotten the norm, but she does get a spot in the Top 25, slotting in at No. 17 already.

Right behind Carissa in the rankings is veteran GM Anna Ushenina at No. 18. Anna hasn’t been so active as of late, but when she’s been playing, she’s been good. In January, she produced her best results of the year at the European Rapid & Blitz, becoming European Women’s Rapid Champion and finishing runner-up in the blitz. At 39, she’s still a force to be reckoned with, and in speed chess of all disciplines.

Have to Mention

Teodora Injac had one of the most amazing performances of the year last month, winning the European Championship in spite of a first-round loss where she had mate-in-two. She won nine games in a row and was performing near 2600 before a last-round draw when the title was already clinched. Injac is up to No. 14 now. Her trajectory had been upwards for a long time, and she’s gotten it done without any invites to the Grand Prix or the other top women’s tournaments.

Lu Miaoyi still didn’t make the Top 25 quite yet, but she was very close. Her performance in the Tata Steel Challengers was outstanding, save for the last few rounds. Through 9 rounds, she was only half a point off a GM norm level (albeit a 9-round norm in a longer RR isn’t allowed). If it was a normal-length tournament instead of a whopping 13 rounds, that would have been the signature performance to get her on the list. Even so, she has been quite solid in her other tournaments as well, particularly this past month when she performed over 2450 across 28 whole games. It’s only a matter of time before she makes the list.

Oh, and of course, Ju Wenjun is still World Champion and still world No. 1 after yet another title defense last month.

This was a big update, but the next rankings in August will be even bigger. It will include the final Grand Prix leg, the conclusion of the Grand Prix series, the privately-organized Cairns Cup and Norway Chess super-tournaments, and to top it all off, the FIDE Women’s World Cup in July that includes all the players, not just the ones who get the invites. That means more than half of the Candidates spots will be decided by the next rankings too!

That’s not even all. This month also features some of the strongest open tournaments of the year, highlighted by the Sharjah Masters and the Dubai Open.

The chess season is only heating up! We’re due for a big shift in the rankings come August! It couldn’t be busier!

How did Tan Zhongyi get here?

Almost a year ago exactly, FIDE hosted the Candidates and Women’s Candidates together for the first time. The men’s event was won by Gukesh. The Women’s Candidates, expected to be a hotly-contested battle between Aleksandra Goryachkina and Lei Tingjie, in the end was won by Tan Zhongyi! Wait, what? How did she do that?

Tan Zhongyi did not totally come out of nowhere. She was in fact Women’s World Champion already in 2017. But that was when the championship followed the current World Cup knock-out format. Quite different from winning a match, or the Candidates. That was also eight years ago!

Even worse, even though Tan Zhongyi was World Champion, she was never really a top player. Around the time she was champion, she only peaked at No. 7 in the world. That’s good, but there is still a big gap between that and what someone like Ju Wenjun has achieved. If you’re familiar with the elite men’s players, think of Tan Zhongyi as an older version of Jan-Krzysztof Duda. Yeah, he won the World Cup, but he has only peaked at world No. 12. Imagine if does nothing for the next 5 years, then at age 32 finally breaks into the Top 10 and Top 5 and wins the Candidates. That would be insane! Well, that’s what Tan Zhongyi has done.

Just like that, Tan Zhongyi finally made it into the Top 5 last year and then the Top 3. What she has done is particularly insane for women. She is the first woman ever to break into the Top 3 past age 30, and she did it at age 33. The previous oldest someone had done it was only 28.

What’s even more insane is Tan Zhongyi has done it all as a part-time player. When Tan was only 23 years old, she became a coach for her home province Chongqing and a year later, became a coach for the national team. In other words, pretty much everything she achieved since then or around then was as a part-time player. Nowadays, she has her own chess club co-run with her father. In her Candidates post-victory interview, she said she still considers herself a part-time player, and her chess club is her real priority.

Even as a part-time player, Tan Zhongyi found the time to up her game. Perhaps she was sparked by the previous Candidates in 2022 when she upset defending champion Aleksandra Goryachkina, who still seemed like the favourite to repeat at the time, in the semi-final. Several months later, Tan was consummately destroyed in the Candidates final by Lei Tingjie. But maybe getting that close to another World Championship match without really trying was what made her think she could get to that next level if she just put in a bit more effort.

Before Tan Zhongyi won the Candidates last year, she said she came to the realization that it wasn’t too late for her to try to win a World Championship match. She also said she began to put in that concentrated extra effort to try to get there, and it paid off with the Candidates win and the spot in the World Championship match she was aiming for. It didn’t just pay off with that. She also won a few more tournaments after the Candidates, including the Cairns Cup in St. Louis and four tournaments in a row total. Across all 41 games she played in 2024, Tan Zhongyi maintained a performance level above 2600, at 2611 to be exact. That made her the best player in women’s chess last year by a wide margin of nearly 50 points, ahead of who else but Ju Wenjun at No. 2 of course!

How did Ju Wenjun get here?

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you probably know that Ju Wenjun is the Women’s World Champion, and has been for quite some time. But you may not remember how Ju Wenjun first won the title. It was by winning a match against Tan Zhongyi in 2018. Now, here they are again, seven years later, vying for the crown yet again.

Even before Ju Wenjun became World Champion, she was already one of the best players in the world. Before she turned 21, she was already 2550 and world No. 6. She reached No. 3 at age 23. In 2016, she won the whole Women’s Grand Prix series to solidify herself as the clear world No. 2 behind only Hou Yifan. As Grand Prix champion, that entitled Ju Wenjun to a spot in the World Championship match against the forthcoming 2017 knock-out World Championship winner, which ended up being Tan Zhongyi. Ju Wenjun won that match by a narrow margin to become World Champion in May 2018 and she hasn’t let go of the crown since.

The craziest defense Ju Wenjun had to do was the first one, when she was forced to defend her title not even six months after she won it. That first defense wasn’t even a match, it was the knock-out World Championship. Amazingly, she won that too, beating Kateryna Lagno in the final. From there, it’s been mostly smooth sailing. Even though she was trailing in her matches against Aleksandra Goryachkina and Lei Tingjie past the halfway point each time, she still was able to figure out how to come from behind and win.

Ju Wenjun has been the de facto world No. 1 for most of the time since Hou Yifan pseudo-retired in 2018/19. Goryachkina surpassed her in-between her 2020 and 2023 matches, but since then, Ju Wenjun has mostly been able to hold on to that de facto No. 1 ranking.

Head-to-head

Ju Wenjun and Tan Zhongyi have played a lot of games against each other, 50 in classical to be exact! They have faced off in a whole World Championship match of course. At the end of last year, Ju Wenjun beat Tan Zhongyi in the World Rapid. But none of their classical games are actually recent. Their most recent classical games were in 2019, when they played twice in Chinese League, and Ju Wenjun both. Tan Zhongyi hasn’t beaten Ju Wenjun in classical since their last World Championship match seven years ago.

But there is still some hope for Tan Zhongyi. She did win two games in that World Championship match she lost to Ju Wenjun. She was also the one who knocked out Ju Wenjun in the 2017 knock-out World Championship that she went on to win, and she did it in classical with Black. Before that, Tan Zhongyi faced Ju Wenjun in the final of the 1st China Chess Queen knock-out tournament, essentially a Chinese knock-out women’s national championship. She won that match against Ju Wenjun to win the title, although she needed Armageddon to do it and they drew both classical games.

Why you should root for Ju Wenjun

Ju Wenjun is the Magnus Carlsen of women’s chess right now. She’s been World Champion forever, and No. 1 for a long time. She’s been winning everything across all formats. She’s the reigning World Blitz Champion, and is only the third player ever to complete the career Triple Crown (winning world titles in classical, rapid, & blitz) along with Magnus and Susan Polgar. She only narrowly had to settle for runner-up in the World Rapid Championship. If Ju Wenjun retains her World Championship title this time, it would give her another chance to hold all three crowns at once at the upcoming World Rapid Championship this December. Even online, Ju Wenjun easily won the chess.com Women’s Speed Chess Championship and was the only woman all of last year to score 8.5/11 in Titled Tuesday even though she only played two or three times.

Above all, winning this title would be a historic milestone for Ju Wenjun. In women’s chess, there is one number of World Championships that matters more than any other: five. Since the introduction of the match format in 1950s, the two most-dominant Women’s World Champions have been Nona Gaprindashvili and Maia Chiburdanidze, who held the crown back-to-back for 30 years combined. They have been the two longest-reigning champions by far, and they both won the title five times. In the 30+ years since, no one has been able to repeat that amazing feat. Xie Jun and Hou Yifan came the closest with four, but even they didn’t do it with four consecutive titles. Ju Wenjun is the first to win four consecutive titles since Nona and Maia. If she wins this one too, she would finally equal their legacy with five consecutive crowns.

Why you should root for Tan Zhongyi

Simply put, Tan Zhongyi is the underdog. No one really expects her to win. That being said, if you just assume her probability of winning is the low percentage of people who are picking her to win, then her chances are probably being underestimated. After all, she did outperform Ju Wenjun last year. And overall, she has a decent head-to-head record against Ju Wenjun, winning a decent number of games. It’s hard to write someone like that off completely.

If Tan Zhongyi wins, it would easily be the longest gap between losing the title and getting it back. There would be no equivalent in chess history, women or men. It would be like George Foreman regaining the heavyweight title in boxing. For a long time, it really seemed like Tan Zhongyi had given up on her career. But now after all those years, she has that belief back. What a great story that would be if she wins.

What makes this match special

Yeah, it’s China vs. China. And it’s 1991 vs. 1991. But more than that, it’s 1 vs. 2. Ju Wenjun and Tan Zhongyi are clearly the two best players in the world right now. That’s what the World Championship match is supposed to be. If you look at the men’s matches in the last fifteen years or so, that hasn’t really happened a whole lot, and it might not happen again for awhile. On the other hand, since FIDE brought the match format back for the women in 2020, you could make a good case the previous two matches with Ju Wenjun vs. Goryachkina and Lei Tingjie were also between the two best players in the world at the time. All in all, the women battling for the World Championship really are the best in the world.

The other facet of this match of note is that it’s a rematch. That’s quite rare. The only other rematches in women’s chess history are Nona Gaprindashvili beating Alla Kushnir three times in a row, all pretty easily. The next closest thing to a rematch involved the 1956 triagonal match won by Olga Rubtsova between the three champions of the ’50s: Rubtsova, Elisaveta Bykova, and Lyudmila Rudenko. Bykova had beaten Rudenko in 1953 and would beat Rubtsova in 1958, but none of these were really rematches because the 1956 championship wasn’t really a match. Unlike Gaprindashvili and Kushnir where Gaprindashvili was a huge favourite every time, this match between Ju Wenjun and Tan Zhongyi isn’t nearly as clear. It could be the first good rematch in women’s chess history.

Who will win?

I’m picking Ju Wenjun to complete her bag of five, but I think it should be close. Even if Tan Zhongyi is a better player than Ju Wenjun today, as their performance levels suggest, it’s going to be hard for Tan to overcome Ju Wenjun’s match experience.

If it’s anything like the last match between them, there should be a lot of decisive games. But then again, they are very different players by now, so we’ll see.

If the match is close and ends up going to tiebreaks, Ju Wenjun’s chances go up big time. She definitely has a huge edge over Tan Zhongyi in speed chess. Although in the last match vs Lei Tingjie, the same was true and Ju Wenjun famously did everything she could to avoid tiebreaks, but even that worked out in her favour.

Coverage

You can catch coverage of the match by FIDE, lichess, and presumably chess.com. FIDE has Evgenij Miroshnichenko. Lichess has Jesse February and Toms Kantāns. chess.com has not announced any coverage yet.

The match start time is 3 PM in China (which is 12:30 PM in India, 9 AM Central European Time, 3 AM on US east coast, and 12 AM on US west coast. Only time will tell who will post recap videos.) Game 1 is Thursday, April 3rd. Game 2 is April 4th. Game 3 is April 6th, and so on. There’s a few-day break in the middle for players to travel from Shanghai to Chongqing for the second half of the match. The last game is April 20th.

If you look at the women’s world elite the last few years, it looks something like the men’s world elite did when it stagnated in the late 2010s up to 2020. Most of the Top 10 is old. Of the new faces to establish themselves in the Top 10 since Tan Zhongyi won the world title in 2017, it’s really only Aleksandra Goryachkina and Lei Tingjie. A few others have poked their heads above 2500, but haven’t been able to stay there. That might sound bad at first, but if things play out like they did for the men, it would point to us being just a few years away from colossal change at the top of women’s chess.

Will that happen? Who are these next players that are going to break through into the women’s world elite? To get a sense of that, let’s go through who the next GM, next young players, and next World Champion are going to be.

Next GM?

No women earned the GM title last year, which only makes it more intriguing to see who is going to be the next GM. (Vaishali was the last to do it in December 2023, becoming the 42nd GM in women’s chess history.)

The most obvious name might be Alina Kashlinskaya. She stunned everyone by making her 2nd-ever GM norm as a replacement player in the Grand Prix after over a year off from international competition. She only needs one more norm. She doesn’t play many tournaments where norms are feasible, but she is going to get another chance as a replacement player in the Grand Prix next month in India. Hopefully she’ll get to replace someone in the final leg in Austria the following month too.

The other most obvious name is Bibisara Assaubayeva. Bibisara got within a few points of 2500 last year, and only needs one more norm. She did drop a bit in rating after her last tournament though, so now she has more work to do than Alina. But unlike Alina, Bibisara plays a lot more tournaments where norms are feasible.

If it’s not one of those two, it would probably be Polina Shuvalova. She needs two more norms. She certainly played well enough in opens last year to earn norms, but fell just short with a 2586 performance in Aktobe. She did reach the necessary 2600 level in Annemasse, but without playing enough GMs. Still, if she keeps up that level, it’s only a matter of time. She also gets her next good shot as a replacement player in the Grand Prix next month in India.

And of course if those three take too long, don’t forget about Divya Deshmukh. She has been 2500, but still needs all three norms. As a wild card pick, Lela Javakhishvili is 40 years old and rated 2429. But she has been 2500 before and has two norms. If she just randomly makes one more, she would be the oldest-ever to earn the GM title in women’s chess history.

Next 2500?

The next player to hit 2500 might not be the same as the next GM. Of the names mentioned above, only Bibisara has yet to hit that threshold. Bibisara is definitely the most likely by far, but if she doesn’t do it next, who else has a chance? If we look at the list of top players who have yet to hit 2500, three names stand out.

The first two are a pair of names: Teodora Injac and Stavroula Tsolakidou. Both are from European countries not particularly strong for chess, and both were born in 2000. They’re both around 2450 now. Injac has been trending upwards for a long time, while Tsolakidou has been trending upwards ever since she graduated from university early last summer. Both have at least one GM norm, so you know they actually want to hit 2500 to have a shot at the GM title.

The other main possibility is someone much younger: 15-year-old Lu Miaoyi. She is a bit lower in rating right now, but she’s still a junior. She generally has played much more frequently than her adult counterparts, so she could have a big jump rather quickly.

Next IM?

Last year, we had three new IMs, a bit low compared to eight the previous year. So far this year, we haven’t had any, but that could change very quickly. Unlike GM or 2500, there are a bunch of players right now who are already very close.

Four women already have all their IM norms, and only need to reach 2400 to get the title. That includes two juniors: India’s 19-year-old Rakshitta Ravi (2324) and Kazakhstan’s 17-year-old Alua Nurman (2347). The other two are Poland’s 23-year-old Alicja Śliwicka (2376), who only got the WGM title last year, and India’s 28-year-old PV Nandhidhaa (2365), who made all her norms years ago but just recently hit a career-best rating.

But the next woman to become an IM might actually be one of the two who has already reached 2400 and only needs one more norm. The first is Hungary’s 17-year-old Zsóka Gaál, who made three norms back-to-back-to-back last autumn, but one of them was only seven games, so she still needs one more. The other is Azerbaijan’s 21-year-old Govhar Beydullayeva. She’s had no less than eight games in the past year-and-a-half where she could have earned her final IM norm. Those near-misses haven’t been all bad though. Even though she’s the only one on the national team without the IM title, she outperformed all her teammates in 2024 with a 2399 performance across the whole year. She’ll get another shot at the IM title next month in the European Women’s Championship.

Next young prodigy?

There are no next prodigies of course, because if you are in line to be the next young prodigy, then for all intensive purposes, you already are one. A number of young prodigies have had excellent achievements in the last few years.

Alice Lee and Lu Miaoyi became the 3rd and 4th youngest girls in chess history to become IMs, which they achieved at 13 and 14 respectively. India had two different girls top their overall age-10 rating list last year. Charvi did it in December, and Sharvaanica (“the 100-percent girl” for all her perfect scores in tournaments) did it one month earlier and she was only age 9 at the time. Meanwhile, Alanna Berikkyzy (the girls’ U10 World Champion) is the same age as Charvi, and accomplished the same feat in Kazakhstan and at a similar rating too. Likewise, Bodhana is the same age of Sharvaanica, and accomplished the same feat in England. She also became the youngest girl in chess history to reach CM-level in rating, and one of the youngest-ever overall as well.

Overall, young prodigies have had a pretty good last few years.

Next World Champion?

Ju Wenjun has been World Champion for almost seven years now. But no matter how good she is, some day we’ll have a new World Champion. Who will be the next World Champion?

Tan Zhongyi is the obvious pick as she is literally playing a match against Ju Wenjun for the title in less than two weeks. The two are similarly-rated and have a rather balanced history against one another. It could go either away. But if you believe Ju Wenjun will win, then we have to look further ahead to 2027 or beyond.

How long could Ju Wenjun be World Champion? At 34, she is already the oldest Women’s World Champion since Nona Gaprindashvili in 1978. That may make it seem like you wouldn’t expect her to be World Champion for much longer. But Tan Zhongyi is also turning 34 this year, so Tan dethroning Ju Wenjun wouldn’t change anything age-wise.

Nona was in fact World Champion until she was 37. For Ju Wenjun to pass Nona, she would have to win the next two, this year and one more in 2027. If she succeeds, she wouldn’t be dethroned until at least 2029. How old would her expected competitors be then? Goryachkina would be 30, while Lei Tingjie would be 32. Among the next generation, Vaishali at 27 and Zhu Jiner at 26 might be hitting their prime. It would also be more than enough time for the current juniors to reach the top, as Divya Deshmukh would be 23 and Lu Miaoyi would be 19. That could be some difficult competition for Ju Wenjun at 38. But would she be stopped before then?

Looking ahead to 2027, the next Candidates is only about a year away. With most of the spots not decided until later this year, Goryachkina is the only one who already looks on track to qualify (through the Women’s Grand Prix). If she could return to her peak form from 2021, she would obviously be a threat. She might be the only one though as most of the other top names right now are in their 30s. Lei Tingjie’s participation in the next cycle is unclear after her withdrawal from the Grand Prix, while Tan no longer automatically qualifies for the Candidates if she loses the match. Meanwhile, the few younger names would need to elevate their game around 50 Elo in the next twelve months to contend. If Ju Wenjun beats Tan next month, maybe her reign really will make it to 2029.

Overall, big change might take a bit more time, but for some of these things like next IM and more importantly, next World Champion, you might already get to see it play out next month. Stay tuned! You never know what will happen.

If you’re new or you haven’t seen my previous sets of rankings, these are the Top 25 women’s chess players based on both results and performance across all OTB formats in the past two years, with emphasis on classical and the most recent 12 months. (Check out here for the full methodology.)

New rankings (January 2025)

This set of rankings includes everything through the end of 2024. The big highlight was the World Rapid & Blitz Championship, but there was also the second leg of the 2024-25 FIDE Women’s Grand Prix in Kazakhstan as well as Tata Steel India right after. Other key tournaments included the European Club Cup and a whole bunch of big open tournaments that coincided with the World Championship match.

The biggest tournaments that no longer count towards the most recent year are the Grand Swiss and the 2023 editions of the Qatar Masters and World Rapid & Blitz.

Here are the new rankings!

Since October

If you read that list of tournaments above and thought “Wow, that’s a lot of tournaments!”, well you’re right! A lot has changed since the last rankings, even with only three new months covered.

The biggest development was Aleksandra Goryachkina. The recent World Championship challenger had been rather quiet since her 2023 World Cup triumph, most notably struggling at the Grand Swiss and the Candidates. But in the last few months of 2024, she flipped a switch back to the terror she once was. She totally annihilated the 2nd leg of the Women’s Grand Prix, with a five-game win streak and a 2691 performance that was on par with Ju Wenjun’s world-best in 2024. It also put a stop to Tan Zhongyi’s spectacular run of four consecutive tournament wins even though Tan didn’t play badly and came in second just half a point back. If that wasn’t enough, Goryachkina followed it up by winning Tata Steel India Rapid immediately after. Team Death Stare is back!

The other big highlight was Polina Shuvalova. She actually had a terrible first part of the year plummeting more than 50 Elo in a span of several months, but turned it around and gained it all back and more. Shuvalova’s best stretch of 2024 came at the end when she tied for first place in back-to-back open tournaments. At the Annemasse Masters in particular, she was unlucky not to earn a GM norm. She had a 2600+ performance, played three 2500s, met all the requirements, except only two of her three 2500+ opponents were GMs. Unfortunately, the last one was not, even though he was 2544 and won the tournament. Still, Shuvalova was easily the best woman in opens in 2024 and with that form, wouldn’t be far from challenging for the world title.

But enough about how things have changed since October. Let’s take a look at what you really want to see: how things have changed since a year ago!

Look out below

Two of the biggest Top 10 surprises in 2023, Nurgyul Salimova and Dinara Wagner, couldn’t keep it up in 2024. They fell from Nos. 9 & 10 to just barely staying in the rankings at Nos. 23 & 24. Neither accomplished much this past year, but there may be hope on the horizon. Nurgyul will get a chance at redemption in the Women’s Grand Prix, while Dinara just got a full-time sponsor to help her pursuit of the GM title.

The other biggest decliners were the veterans Alexandra Kosteniuk and Kateryna Lagno. They weren’t a surprise to make the Top 10 last year, but they were a surprise to fall out this year. They both still excelled in speed chess, with Kosteniuk winning the European Rapid & Blitz double and Lagno getting double bronze at the World Rapid & Blitz to go along with the Tata Steel India Blitz title. But neither had similar success in classical, a bit backwards from what one might expect for veteran players.

Top 25 players from January 2024 no longer ranked now:
GM Bella Khotenashvili (16), GM Elisabeth Pähtz (17), IM Meri Arabidze (18), GM Antoaneta Stefanova (20), GM Mariya Muzychuk (21), IM Gunay Mammadzada (25)

Staying put

Some of the best players that have held steady after the past year were Ju Wenjun, Aleksandra Goryachkina, and Vaishali, who are all ranked exactly where they started at Nos. 1, 3, and 8. For Ju Wenjun, she’s been No. 1 the whole year. But Goryachkina had fallen to No. 7, while Vaishali — the other biggest Top 10 surprise from 2023 — actually rose to No. 3 before ending up where she started.

Moving up in the world

It was a great year for some of the top young stars, particularly Zhu Jiner and Divya Deshmukh. Zhu Jiner, the youngest woman with the GM title, climbed from No. 15 to No. 7, highlighted by her Olympiad Board 1 gold and double gold at the European Club Cup. And Divya, who wasn’t even ranked at the start of last year, finishes 2024 in the Top 10 at No. 9, and was even No. 6 on the previous list. Other young stars Bibisara Assaubayeva and Polina Shuvalova did moderately well, inching up slightly in the rankings. Further down the list, Teodora Injac and Stavroula Tsolakidou — both still only 24 years old — both jumped a big chunk up to make it into the Top 20.

Rising in the ranks isn’t just for the young. Alina Kashlinskaya is back in the rankings at No. 12, courtesy of her Grand Prix leg win & GM norm, after taking a year off to become a mom. Nana Dzagnidze, also after having another kid, had a great bounce-back year with an Olympiad Board 1 silver and a European Club Cup double gold. But perhaps the biggest comeback of all came from all-time legend Humpy Koneru, who claimed a second World Rapid Championship and finished runner-up at the Candidates, taking her up to No. 5, a seven-spot rise from where she started last year.

Top 25 players who weren’t ranked in January 2024:
IM Divya Deshmukh (9), IM Alina Kashlinskaya (12), IM Sara Khadem (20), IM Olga Badelka (21), IM Leya Garifullina (22), IM Yuliia Osmak (25)

Take a look at the Top 25 list now. One year from now, you can expect about five to drop out, five new names, and one or two new names in the Top 10. Who knows, maybe we’ll see a new name in Top 5 too!

Think you know who it’s going to be? There’s only one way to find out!

The FIDE Circuit has been highly influential to both the World Championship cycle and professional chess in general. The winner of the first FIDE Circuit was Gukesh, and he went on to win the Candidates and become World Champion. If there was no FIDE Circuit, we would have a different World Champion right now. At the same time, the FIDE Circuit has been the subject of criticism ever since it was announced. In the two years since, at least some of that criticism has proven to be justified.

Will the Women’s FIDE Circuit be the same? Despite the circuit having a similar purpose, the two circuits are actually quite different. Let’s review the circuit formats, go over the differences, and at the end, we’ll see if the new Women’s FIDE Circuit is good or bad for women’s chess.

Overview

The current World Championship cycle actually features two separate FIDE Circuits, one for 2024 and one for 2025, that are largely the same. Players receive point scores (e.g. 11 for 1st, 8 for 2nd, etc.) for having good results at tournaments, specifically finishing in the Top 3 of a round-robin or Top 8 in a Swiss. These scores are then weighted according to the tournament’s strength, determined by the ratings of top eight players in the field. Stronger tournaments count more. Only tournaments with an average rating above 2600 receive a weight of at least 1.0, and tournaments with an average rating below 2500 don’t count at all. A player’s seven best scores count toward their total. Most of the tournaments have to be classical, although a player can count one or two rapid & blitz tournaments, with the World Rapid and World Blitz Championships worth the most and second-most respectively. At the end of the year, the top player not already qualified for the Candidates earns a spot there.

The new 2024-25 Women’s FIDE Circuit consists of only eight tournaments: (1, 2) the World Rapid Championship in 2024 & 2025, (3, 4), the World Blitz Championship in 2024 & 2025, (5), the 2025 World Cup, (6) the 2025 Grand Swiss, (7) the 2024-25 Women’s Grand Prix, which is counted not as individual tournaments but as a series, and (8) the World Championship match. FIDE has assigned points for finishing in the Top 8 of each of these tournaments or the overall Grand Prix series. At the end of next year, the player with the most points not already qualified for the Women’s Candidates earns a spot there.

Classical vs. Rapid & Blitz

The biggest difference is how much of the circuit is classical. For the FIDE Circuit, almost all of it is classical. Even the few events that are rapid and blitz are weighted lower. On the other hand, more than half the Women’s FIDE Circuit is rapid & blitz. Each of the World Rapid Championships is also weighted more than any of the classical events.

When the FIDE Circuit was announced, the fact that any of it was rapid & blitz, even if it was just a little, was met with criticism. Players were not happy with the possibility that rapid and blitz could determine a Candidates spot, especially given the World Rapid & Blitz Championships would be the final event of the circuit every year.

With the Women’s FIDE Circuit, it’s almost a certainty that the Candidates spot will be determined by the World Rapid & Blitz Championships, or really the World Rapid Championship. If the circuit had existed for the last cycle, five of the top seven players in the race for the Candidates spot would have had their top score come from the World Rapid & Blitz, with all but one from the World Rapid. The other two had their top score come from the Women’s Grand Prix. One advantage of giving the World Rapid & Blitz this much importance is that it should get all the top players to play the event, although almost all of the top players were already playing it in recent years.

Not only are the rapid & blitz events a lot more prominent, there are barely any classical events. In fact, there are no classical events at all where the winner counts towards the circuit. The winners AND runner-ups of the three classical tournaments (WGP, World Cup, and Grand Swiss) all already qualify for the Candidates, so they’re not part of the circuit. The only way you can get meaningful circuit points from a classical tournament is to finish 3rd or 4th in the Women’s Grand Prix series or the Grand Swiss. The Grand Swiss is essentially the only classical tournament on the circuit because the World Cup offers very few points and each leg of the Grand Prix doesn’t count individually.

To summarize, the Women’s FIDE Circuit essentially just pits the medallists in the two World Rapid Championships against the 3rd and 4th place finishers in the Grand Prix & Grand Swiss. The player who qualifies in the end will be mainly determined by if the winners of the World Rapid are already qualified.

Importance of events

The next major difference is the importance of events on the circuit. The Women’s FIDE Circuit only includes major FIDE tournaments that are part of the World Championship cycle or determine a (rapid or blitz) world championship. On the other hand, the FIDE Circuit includes almost literally any tournament, as long as it has a bunch of 2500s (or really 2600s to make it count enough).

The design of the FIDE Circuit has been met with criticism because it is mostly privately-organized (non-FIDE) events. Anyone can organize a tournament where the player roster or format are “rigged” to help one particular player win the circuit. For instance, many of these events are invitationals, so no one is guaranteed a spot no matter how good they are. If there are two main contenders to win the circuit, a private organizer backing one of them could just organize a tournament where their sponsored player is invited and the other isn’t. (The tournament needs to be registered far in advance, but the player list does not.)

This strategy to “rig” circuit events also works because private events count just as much, if not more than FIDE events. The only factor that determines the weight of the tournament is the rating of the players, not the importance of the tournament. (For example, a brand-new event will count just as much as FIDE events like the Candidates or more established events like the Grand Chess Tour.) These problems with the FIDE Circuit don’t exist with the Women’s FIDE Circuit. In that sense, FIDE has improved on that issue. On the other hand, there are a bunch of other established women’s events in existence (e.g. Cairns Cup, Norway Chess, European Women’s Championship, etc.). Why don’t any of those events count at all?

Also, while randomly organizing events is bad for FIDE Circuit purposes, at least it helps players get more opportunities to play and make money. That might not make as much difference for the men, but it would make a huge difference for the women. Barely anyone is organizing private women’s events. It would have been great if the Women’s FIDE Circuit motivated organizers to create more elite women’s events.

World Championship runner-up’s chances

The last major difference is the World Championship runner-up’s chances. Because Ding did so well in the match, he got a whopping 40+ points, which is way more than anyone else can get at any other tournament. (The highest score in this year’s circuit was 28.67 for winning the Sinquefield Cup.) But even if he got destroyed in the match like Nepo vs. Magnus, he would have still got 24 points, the equivalent of winning a 2700+ super-tournament. So basically no matter what, the World Championship runner-up would have been in good shape for next year’s FIDE Circuit. If Ding is interested in winning next year’s FIDE Circuit, he would be a huge favorite. With 40+ points, he would only need around 70 more points next year, whereas anyone else would need 110+. There essentially would be no FIDE Circuit in 2025 if Ding goes for it (unless he already qualifies through the World Cup or Grand Swiss).

On the other hand, the loser of the Ju Wenjun vs. Tan Zhongyi barely gets any circuit points for losing the match, regardless of how well they do. If it were like the FIDE Circuit and equivalent to winning a women’s super-tournament, the loser of the match would get about 80 points, or maybe even over 100 if they do well. But instead, regardless of the match score, they only get 25 points, which is only equivalent to tying for 6th place in the Women’s Grand Swiss. The expected score needed to win the circuit is about 120 points. So 25 probably wouldn’t make much difference, as we can see from how Lei Tingjie would have fared if there was a circuit last time.

Who would qualify?

All the tournament on the Women’s FIDE Circuit existed in 2022 and 2023, so we can just check who would have qualified. But first, we need to take into account that the circuit isn’t the only change. This time, 3rd place in the World Cup gets a Candidates spot, and FIDE is also giving 4th place in the World Cup a Candidates spot if one of the top three is already qualified. The other main change is that there is no longer a provision for the two Grand Swiss qualifiers to finish in the top three like there was in the past cycle.

Taking all that into account, here is what the final standings would have looked like:

Humpy Koneru would have qualified by virtue of her two strong performances (2nd and T-3rd) at the 2022 and 2023 World Rapid Championships. She in fact finished 5th in the circuit, but three of the players ahead of her were direct qualifiers (who really shouldn’t be in the standings once they qualify), and one other — Tan Zhongyi — would have been a replacement qualifier from 4th place in the World Cup (one of the other changes) because the winner Goryachkina had already qualified.

Humpy in fact did qualify for the last Candidates, but through the rating spot that was only there because Goryachkina was already qualified. Humpy’s qualification was a bit controversial because she had not done well in any classical tournaments in the preceding two years. With the new qualification rules, she still would have qualified, but through the circuit. It would only have been because she did well in rapid & blitz, which also probably would have been a bit controversial.

The biggest change to the Candidates wouldn’t have been from the circuit, but would have been Batkhuyag Munguntuul qualifying (as 4th place in the Grand Swiss) instead of Lei Tingjie (the World Championship runner-up). This is because the Grand Swiss has two qualifiers, two of the top three in the Grand Swiss (Anna Muzychuk and Tan Zhongyi) already qualified, and you no longer need to finish top 3 to get one of those two Candidates spots.

Meanwhile, Lei Tingjie wouldn’t have qualified. She only would have been 4th in the circuit, 44 points behind Humpy. Lei could have got more points had she played the Grand Prix, but the same could be said for Humpy, who missed a Grand Prix leg due to illness. Perhaps they both would have played with a Candidates spot at stake.

Looking at these standings, it does seem to confirm the expectation that the World Rapid Championships will be the main two tournaments determining a Candidates spot.

Is the Women’s FIDE Circuit good or bad?

The idea behind the FIDE Circuit is reward the player who does the best in classical year-round with a Candidates spot. Overall, that sounds like a good idea. The only potential issues are if it does a good job of determining that.

On the other hand, the idea behind the Women’s FIDE Circuit is to reward the player who does the best in rapid and blitz at the World Rapid & Blitz Championships. That doesn’t seem to make much sense. Why not have the women’s circuit serve the same purpose and at least try to also reward the best player in classical year-round with a Candidates spot?

The one advantage is that it does force the match runner-up to keep playing if they want to be in the next Candidates. After Lei Tingjie lost the last World Championship match, she basically stopped playing (much like Ding Liren) and didn’t play classical again until the next Candidates nine months later. She wouldn’t have had that option this time.

The other main downside is next Women’s World Championship match runner-up not automatically getting a spot in the next Candidates. With Ding, it was somewhat understandable because he has not been in form for over a year. But for the women, Tan Zhongyi and Ju Wenjun have been the two best players this year by a wide margin. If there was a Women’s FIDE Circuit this year following the format of the men’s circuit, Tan would have won it easily. Why shouldn’t either of them be in the next Candidates?

The new Women’s FIDE Circuit shows the same messiness and lack of thought put into it as the FIDE Circuit, probably even more. Whereas the winner of the FIDE Circuit getting a Candidates spot at least seemed deserved (maybe even 2nd or 3rd also seemed to deserve a spot), that seems a lot less likely for the women.

The Women’s FIDE Circuit officially starts this week at the Women’s World Rapid & Blitz Championships in New York. The winner of the rapid will be the early favorite to win the inaugural women’s circuit and qualify for the next Candidates. You don’t want to miss it!

GMs

Expectation: Two new women would become GMs.

Reality: No new GMs yet.

Last year, we had two new women becomes GMs (Zhu Jiner and Vaishali) in the same year for the third time in the last ten years. In chess history, that has only happened in consecutive years one time (2010-11). Would it happen again this year?

So far, no one has done it. Entering the year, Bibisara Assaubayeva was the most likely to reach GM. She was already 2472 and only needed 1 more GM norm. But so far, she has fallen just short of that final norm on a few different occasions, including in the Sharjah Masters and the Women’s Grand Prix. She’s also gotten to 2497, but not 2500. The other one who has gotten close is Alina Kashlinskaya, who only needed two norms. She has barely played this year amidst returning from maternity leave, but actually did make her 2nd GM norm in one of her few tournaments. The last player who has made significant strides to GM has been Divya Deshmukh. Divya had a long way to go, starting the year at 2420 with no norms. But she was still able to make it to 2500. Now she just has to get the norms. If no one makes GM this year, it will certainly be something to watch again next year.

Candidates

Expectation: Lei Tingjie and Aleksandra Goryachkina would have a historic clash at the Candidates.

Reality: Tan Zhongyi won the Candidates.

The 2024 Candidates featured the youngest clash of former Women’s Candidates winners in Candidates history. After eight rounds, it looked like things might be going according to plan as Lei Tingjie and Goryachkina were both tied for the lead with Tan Zhongyi. But Tan, who was the sole leader the entire first half of the tournament, pulled away in the second half and won by a whole 1.5 points. Lei Tingjie was the closest contender, but Goryachkina lost twice and didn’t end up contending at all.

Neither Lei Tingjie, nor Goryachkina have really played much in 2024. Ding Liren got a lot of attention for his hiatus after his World Championship, but Lei Tingjie in relative obscurity has basically done the same. Her performance hasn’t suffered as much as Ding, but she still hasn’t won anything since the previous Candidates. Meanwhile, it is unknown why Goryachkina has been less active. It may have something to do with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine limiting Russian players’ opportunities overseas, but she also hasn’t been playing the Russian Higher League like she used to. She finally just won something again in the Women’s Grand Prix.

Meanwhile, going into 2024, it looked like Tan Zhongyi winning the Candidates would have been bad for women’s chess. She has already been (knockout) Women’s World Champion, but has already lost a World Championship match to Ju Wenjun and has never been Top 5 in the world among women. But so far, Tan has actually been good for women’s chess. She didn’t stop at winning the Candidates. She has since won four major women’s tournaments in a row and also cracked the Top 3. At age 33, she’s the oldest woman in chess history to make her Top 3 debut and the first one to do it past age 30. Out of nowhere, it looks like she could challenge Ju Wenjun for the throne after all, and that’s great for women’s chess.

Youth

Expectation: Eline Roebers would make a GM norm.

Reality: Eline hasn’t made a norm, but she has made a 2600+ performance.

18-year-old Eline Roebers had three excellent years in 2021, 2022, and 2023 that saw her rise from an off-the-radar untitled 15-year-old rated under 2100 to an IM with a peak rating of 2421, some of the most exciting attacking games in chess, and success in some of the biggest tournaments like the Olympiad and the World Cup. The next logical step to make 2024 a success too would be to make a GM norm. Instead, she had a bad start to the year, with none of her tournaments or league play going well at all.

Fortunately, there was a reason for this. Eline said she stopped focusing on chess and gave up having a coach because she was too busy with school. Now she’s finally done with school, she’s back to focusing on chess, and she’s already seen a huge turnaround. In that time, four of her last five tournaments have gone well. And just this month, she may have had the best tournament of her career. She was invited to play a four-player double-round-robin with her compatriot Machteld and two established Women’s World Champions, Alexandra Kosteniuk and Mariya Muzychuk. Amazingly, she won the tournament easily ahead of both GMs. She beat all three and her 2622 performance (2600 is the requirement for a GM norm) was the best of her career. It wasn’t possible to make a GM norm because it was only a 6-round tournament, but it shows she’s capable of it.

Expectation: Lu Miaoyi would take a long time to regroup.

Reality: Miaoyi already became an IM.

14-year-old Lu Miaoyi had a great 2022, but a terrible 2023. With no other options if she wanted to keep playing chess tournaments during the pandemic, Miaoyi unusually moved to Serbia in 2022 and played over 500 rated games in a year across all formats. It seemed to work out as she rose from under 2200 to nearly 2400 by year’s end. But by mid-2023, she was back under 2200. Late in the year, she received an unusual lifeline when the Philippines invited her to play a GM norm tournament. How did it go? Terrible. She only scored 1/9 to finish the year at 2250.

Some might see that as a bad sign, but not Miaoyi. Instead, she used it as an opportunity to grow. Much like Arjun Erigaisi after he famously scored 1/8 in the 2016 Aeroflot Open, she completely turned it around thereafter. Even though she had been struggling and had never made an IM norm before, she made three in the next two months. Right after turning 14, she already earned the IM title. Only three other girls ever became IMs at a younger age. What’s more is she kept it up. After becoming an IM, she went back to China and played the Chinese Women’s Championship, one of the tournaments that tripped her up in 2023. Not this time. In 2024, she became the 2nd-youngest Chinese women’s champion in history. She also passed her WGM mom’s peak rating. I don’t know what Miaoyi’s next goal is, but I’m sure she’ll achieve it.

Expectation: Divya Deshmukh would continue to rise.

Reality: Divya has been rising, and even faster than expected.

18-year-old Divya Deshmukh was only 2300 when chess grinded to a halt because of the pandemic. Fast forward to the start of this year, and Divya had steadily risen to 2420, gaining rating almost every time she played. Now that she was approaching the women’s world elite, would that rise continue? The answer was yes. And not only did it continue, it accelerated. She was gaining about 100 Elo every 18 months, which put her on pace to hit 2500 around March of next year. But in fact, she has already done it.

Rating doesn’t always tell the whole story though, and the whole story is actually better. Over the six months from March to September, Divya performed at a 2530-level over 64 games. She’s excelled at both big opens and top women’s tournaments. She won the Sharjah Challengers and took double gold at the Olympiad. She only missed a GM norm at the GRENKE Open by the narrowest of margins. This was supposed to be the year we would know if Divya is the future of women’s chess, but she’s already the present.

Olympiad

Expectation: China and India would have a historic clash at the Olympiad.

Reality: India won gold easily, but China didn’t send its A-team.

There’s no doubt that China and India are the top two women’s chess countries in the world right now, and that’s only become more true in 2024. But the epic clash between them that was expected at the Olympiad did not happen. China’s Ju Wenjun and Tan Zhongyi both sat out to focus on the upcoming Women’s World Championship match, and Lei Tingjie opted not to go without them (even though her husband was playing for Taiwan!). Without their Big 3, China fell just short of a medal while India, even without Humpy, ran away with the gold.

With their team gold, India has completed its ascension to the top of women’s chess, but only sort of. China is still clearly stronger, with their Big 3 occupying all the top spots in the rating list and both spots in the World Championship match. If China is too uninterested in the Olympiad, the battle for the top country in women’s chess will be fought in other arenas.

Inevitably, at some point in the future, it will be decided by the next generations. Looking ahead, both China’s Zhu Jiner and India’s Divya Deshmukh have made tremendous strides this year as they look to reach the top. Both China and India have plenty of other talents as well. For now, China has a clear grip on women’s chess. And while China will almost certainly stay their course, India is ideally placed to challenge them even if China doesn’t fade.

The World Champion

Expectation: Ju Wenjun would get the chance to prove herself against the men’s world elite.

Reality: She beat two up-and-coming 2700+ GMs and proved herself indeed.

Ju Wenjun made headlines last year when she was invited to the 2024 Tata Steel Masters, which would be by far the strongest tournament of her career. How would she fare? During her career, Ju Wenjun has actually done quite well against 2600s, scoring around 50%, and even done well against low 2700s, beating three of them. But she never even scored against anyone 2732 or above, and would be facing eight of them in Tata Steel alone.

As it turned out, it went quite well. Ju Wenjun scored 4 draws in those 8 games against the ultra-elite, and even beat World No. 6 Alireza Firouzja. Oddly enough, it was the lower-rated players she didn’t fare well against (although not much of a surprise when that included Gukesh and Nodirbek). She cited fatigue as a factor for not having the best tournament overall (only putting up a 2615-level performance, sub-par for her standard against 2600+), owing to Tata Steel being one of the longest super-tournaments at 13 rounds. After Tata Steel, TePe Sigeman followed suit and invited Ju Wenjun to their super-tournament. Seeing as TePe Sigeman is only 7 rounds, would she fare better with fatigue being less of an issue? The answer was yes. She scored 50%, good for a 2694-level performance. She had two 2600+ wins, including one against World No. 26 Vincent Keymer.

All in all, Ju Wenjun has done quite well in these super-tournaments. And her year isn’t even done. She has one more invite to the London Chess Classic in December. She has nothing left to prove at this point. She can just play the tournament like everyone else.

If you’re new or you haven’t seen my previous sets of rankings, these are the Top 25 women’s chess players based on both results and performance across all OTB formats in the past two years, with emphasis on classical and the most recent 12 months. (Check out here for the full methodology.)

New rankings (October 2024)

This set of rankings includes everything up to the end of September. Besides the Olympiad, the other big tournament for this set of rankings was the first leg of the new 2024-25 FIDE Women’s Grand Prix, which kicked off in Tbilisi, Georgia. The other major change affecting the rankings is that last year’s World Cup no longer counts towards the most recent 12 months.

Here are the new rankings!

Youth arriving in the Top 10

If you were paying attention to the Olympiad, you probably already know that a lot of the top-rated women sat out of the Olympiad. As a result, there aren’t any changes in the Top 5. But there were still a lot of changes in the rest of the Top 10!

Not only does 18-year-old Divya Deshmukh make her Top 10 debut, she’s already up to No. 6! Her performance level in her best five tournaments over the past two years (Olympiad, Sharjah Challengers, GRENKE Open, Polish League, and Tata Steel India Rapid) is very close to 2600. The only others who can really say that about their best tournaments are Ju Wenjun and Vaishali. With all of those elite performances, she’s already primed to challenge Vaishali for the No. 1 Indian spot on the list.

Divya isn’t the only young debutant in the Top 10. Also joining the Top 10 is Zhu Jiner at No. 9. I have to keep reminding you that 21-year-old Zhu Jiner is currently the youngest woman in the world with the GM title because I don’t think she gets enough credit for that. In case you missed it, she already made another (extra) GM norm in Menorca back in April. At the Olympiad, she came close to another 2600 performance even though the field should have been too weak to do that. All in all, Zhu Jiner’s 2597 performance on Board 1 earned her the Board 1 individual gold medal by a decent margin. I’ve already articulated my displeasure with FIDE not including her in the Grand Prix. But she’s Top 10 now. Maybe someone should invite her to a 2600 super-tournament instead.

The third young player to enter the Top 10 is another obvious name, 20-year-old Bibisara Assaubayeva, coming in at No. 10. Bibisara had two great results since the last rankings. She finished runner-up in the Tbilisi Women’s Grand Prix leg. Then she led Kazakhstan to silver on Board 1 at the Olympiad. That was Kazakhstan’s first-ever medal at the Olympiad for either the women’s or open teams. A more than deserving way to enter the Top 10.

“Mom’s back to chess!”

What do Alina Kashlinskaya, Sara Khadem, and Nana Dzagnidze all have in common? They all took some time off from chess recently because they just became moms (in Nana’s case, not for the first time!), and now they’re all back in the Top 25! (Technically, they weren’t in my Top 25 before, but for sure they would have been if I had compiled rankings before this year.)

There have been studies that new moms — on average — lose rating after becoming moms. But that’s only on average. It doesn’t apply to everyone and it certainly doesn’t appear to apply to Alina Kashlinskaya. Her first tournament of the year was the Polish women’s national championship, and she won that. Then, she played the Tbilisi Women’s Grand Prix leg as a one-off replacement player and won that, even though she never won or even medalled in the Grand Prix before. All in all with the Olympiad, which also went well, she’s gained +25 Elo since coming back. Even though she wasn’t ranked in the last Top 25, she’s all the way up to No. 11 on this one.

Things haven’t gone as smoothly for Sara Khadem. She’s had ups and downs, with her biggest down being her last-place finish in the Grand Prix leg. But her ups have been big ups, and she put down an exclamation mark by earning the Board 1 individual silver medal at the Olympiad, only behind Zhu Jiner. Her team Spain also fared well, unexpectedly coming in 4th place, the biggest surprise I think of any of the top finishers. Combining that with her national championship late last year and she’s up to No. 15 in this Top 25 even though she wasn’t ranked in the last one.

The last return player to the Top 25 is the most accomplished, Nana Dzagnidze. Like Sara, it hasn’t gone so smoothly lately. She had the most winning positions at the Cairns Cup, but also the worst conversion rate. Nevertheless, she made up for it at the Olympiad, earning the Board 1 individual bronze medal right behind Sara. In case you didn’t know, for all of Georgia’s great women players, Nana is the highest-rated Georgian woman in history, and the 12th-highest-rated woman ever. She’s No. 19 on this list, and she’s not going away just yet.

This is almost certainly the last Top 25 of the year. The next one will be in January after another Grand Prix leg, Tata Steel India, and most notably the revamped World Rapid and Blitz Championships. Will that next set of rankings be automated? Only time will tell.

For now, the chess season still isn’t over. The rest of the year is still jam-packed with big events. Don’t forget to enjoy it!

No. 9: Zhu Jiner (China)

China is the best women’s chess country in the world no doubt, but it was a big question how they would fare at the Olympiad without any of their top three players. (According to Chess.com reporter Mike Klein, Ju Wenjun and Tan Zhongyi decided to focus on the upcoming Women’s World Championship match instead, while Lei Tingjie did not want to participate if the other two were sitting out.)

In the end, they didn’t medal, but not for a lack of good individual performances. China actually had the most board points of any team (34½/44, compared to India’s 31/44). All five of their players scored at least 75% and gained rating. China’s clear best player was Zhu Jiner on Board 1. Zhu Jiner is currently the youngest woman in the world with the GM title, still just 21 years old. She showed why with a thorough 2597 performance, taking Board 1 gold. She finished the tournament at 2499, and I wouldn’t be surprised if this was the last time we see her under 2500 for a long time.

No. 8: Zsóka Gaál (Hungary)

The Hungarian women’s team didn’t get much of the spotlight even though Budapest was hosting the Olympiad. They finished in 14th place, matching their seed, but individually was a different story. Hungary’s biggest star, 17-year-old Zsóka Gaál, earned the WGM title and also made an IM norm on Board 1. It’s her 2nd IM norm in a row, after she nearly made a GM norm last month in one of Hungary’s well-known GM norm round-robin tournaments.

At a live rating of 2398, Zsóka Gaál is currently Europe’s top junior girl by a wide margin (Eline Roebers is next at 2331). She first reached 2300+ in late 2021, but has stalled in the two-and-a-half years since. Nevertheless, she has been consistently playing norm tournaments in that time and these past few months, it’s finally paid off. Zsóka’s trajectory reminds me a bit of the player who is two years older and No. 1 on this list. Only time will tell if Zsóka has similar success.

No. 7: Eman Sawan (Palestine)

16-year-old Eman Sawan (1972) wasn’t on one of the medal contenders, far from it at as Palestine aren’t even one of the top 100 seeds. But Eman herself became a medal contender when she had a perfect score on Board 1. The individual board medals are based solely on performance rating, which tends to be less accurate for perfect or near-perfect scores. Eman’s perfect score gave her a performance rating above 2600 (because her opposition was rated just above 1800). With no one else likely to finish on a performance that high, Eman had a decent chance to win Board 1 gold ahead of GMs like Kosteniuk or Dzagnidze.

Even though Eman isn’t one of the top players worldwide, you might already recognize her from a gofundme several months ago that supported her trip to the Olympiad. Her family are refugees from Gaza, and she’s been living in Jordan where she was born. As a refugee, she doesn’t have the same rights to education or chess tournaments as citizens. But none of that has stopped her from getting to 1900 rating and now over 2000. At the Olympiad, she couldn’t even play the first round because her teammates didn’t get their visas until one day too late.

In the end, Eman drew the critical game she needed to win to clinch Board 1 gold. Overall, her 8/9 score was still amazing and shows what hidden talents are out there ready to grow if they just receive the opportunity to do so. I hope Eman continues to receive support to cultivate her potential in chess and beyond.

No. 6: Alice Lee (USA)

For better or worse, 14-year-old Alice Lee had to play all the way down on Board 4 even though she was basically the same rating as Team USA’s Board 1 and all their other higher boards really. There is only one way to have success in that position, and that is to beat all the lower-rated players. Alice basically did just that, starting out with a near-perfect 6½/7.

When the time came for the critical matches at the end, Alice came up with three clutch draws against similar-level players. That helped Team USA draw the eventual gold and silver medallists, India and Kazakhstan, and also beat the defending Olympiad champions Ukraine. Each of those results were critical for Team USA to get bronze in the end, their first since 2006. Alice got Board 4 silver, and it would have been gold if not for another otherworldly performance later on in this list.

No. 5: Bibisara Assaubayeva (Kazakhstan)

When the Olympiad started, Bibisara Assaubayeva seemed content with just locking down Board 1 with draws and letting her lower-rated teammates decide the match outcome. But when it came time to face the big-shot opponents, Bibisara stepped it up a notch. Her first win came against GM Harika. Although Kazakhstan still lost that match against India, they wouldn’t have ended up with the silver medal without Bibisara’s other wins against France and Team USA.

Bibisara was Kazakhstan’s only player rated above 2400, or even 2360. They needed her to be solid on Board 1 to have a chance to medal. She was solid (finishing unbeaten), and they did medal.

No. 4: Vantika Agrawal (India)

With India’s top-rated player Humpy Koneru sitting out of the Olympiad, it appeared that their top two boards Harika and Vaishali would need to have good tournaments for India to avenge Chennai 2022 and deliver the gold. But even though neither Harika nor Vaishali really had good tournaments, India still won gold. The lower boards were the reason why.

Let’s start with Vantika Agrawal on Board 4. Vantika didn’t have a great start to the Olympiad, drawing in the first round against Jamaica’s Raehanna Brown, more than 400 points lower-rated. That would be the end of her struggles. India would not have beat the eventual runners-up Kazakhstan if not for her Round 5 win against Alua Nurman. Although Vantika just barely couldn’t save India against Poland, she came back the very next day and beat GM Irina Krush to salvage a match draw against the other eventual medallists, Team USA.

Overall, Vantika finished 7½/9 with a career-best 2558 performance. That won Board 4 gold over Alice Lee by a wide margin. It’s safe to say India would not have won team gold without her.

No. 3: Alua Nurman (Kazakhstan)

How did Kazakhstan become one of the favourites to medal when that didn’t wasn’t the case just a few months ago? The answer was on the three lower boards. All three made IM or GM norms over the summer, which made it possible for Kazakhstan to field a full team all rated above 2300. It was still an unanswered question though whether they could maintain that success, and two out of the three in particular delivered.

Xeniya Balabayeva went undefeated on Board 3, but it was Alua Nurman who stole the show on Board 4. The tipping point was the Round 8 match against France where Alua was moved up a board and found herself in a losing position against Pauline Guichard. With Amina Kairbekova also losing on the bottom board, Kazakhstan were going to lose and their medal hopes would be over. But Alua came back to win and Amina saved a draw. Kazakhstan took the match.

The next round, Kazakhstan had a chance to lead the Olympiad if they beat Poland. With all other boards drawn, it came down to Alua. Again she was worse but again she came back to win. Kazakhstan had the lead over everyone, even India. In the next match against Georgia, Alua was losing again, this time to GM Bella Khotenashvili. It seemed like this was the end for Kazakhstan, losing against a GM. But Alua came back again to draw the game and the match. A round later, Kazakhstan won their first-ever Olympiad medal with silver, and that draw against a GM also earned Alua her final IM norm.

No. 2: Carissa Yip (USA)

Carissa Yip hasn’t been so active lately now that she is in university at Stanford. She hadn’t played any games for five months until July when she started getting in warm-up tournaments for the Olympiad. With only one out of four of those tournaments good and two bad, it was hard to guess what to expect from Carissa.

Or at least that was true until the Olympiad began. Carissa proceeded to destroy everybody. She was the Oliwia Kiołbasa of this Olympiad. She started out 7½/8 on Board 2. Overall, she finished with 10/11, only drawing one game against anyone besides Divya. Carissa was the overall best performer in the whole Women’s Olympiad with a monstrous 2634 performance, of course good for Board 2 gold. And most importantly, her final-round win against Kazakhstan was what clinched the bronze medal for Team USA.

No. 1: Divya Deshmukh (India)

India! India! India! might as well be Divya! Divya! Divya! The 18-year-old from Nagpur, Divya Deshmukh wasn’t just the biggest star of the Olympiad, she’s becoming the biggest star in women’s chess. Divya started the year at just 2420, already effectively her career-best rating. Since March, she’s been gaining rating literally every month. She’s been playing well above 2500 level basically that entire time, and now she finally got the chance to prove it at a top women’s tournament.

Divya was was the only one for India to play every round. She started 7/8 and finished 9½/11. When India fell out of the lead for the first time after Round 9, Divya stepped up. She got the only win against China, which put India back in the lead. Then in the last round, she was the first one to get a win. That ensured no repeat of last Olympiad. This time, India would be the gold medallists. Individually, Divya took Board 3 gold as the 2nd-best performer in the whole Women’s Olympiad. She also hit a major milestone, crossing 2500 for the first time. India is at the top of women’s chess and so is Divya.

This Olympiad belonged to the youth. All of the individual board gold medallists were 21 or younger. And every single one of the nine stars on this list are also 21 or under.

It’s not the biggest surprise the adults couldn’t keep up with the kids when none of the best ones showed up. Some did have good or even great tournaments, just not as exceptional as the ones on this list. Last month’s Women’s Grand Prix leg winner Alina Kashlinskaya was on track for gold on Board 1, but didn’t have the best finish and it at least in part cost Poland in the end. The best performing non-kids were definitely Spain, who surprisingly finished close to the medals in 4th place even though no one had picked them. Sara Khadem and veteran Sabrina Vega Gutierrez both took individual silver on Boards 1 and 3 respectively.

The next Olympiad will take place in 2026 in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. It is fitting that the next Olympiad will be in Asia since that’s the center of the chess world right now. (Europe didn’t medal in either section this time.) For the first time in a long time, another country is presenting a challenge to China’s dominance over women’s chess. Hopefully we’ll see that battle get to play out in 2026.

Those of you under the impression that the Polgar sisters never competed in any women’s tournaments may be surprised to find out that all three Polgars represented Hungary in the Women’s Olympiad in 1988 and 1990, leading Hungary to gold both times. This was one of the biggest successes of their young careers because it was the first time ever the Soviet Union (led mainly by Georgia) played the Women’s Olympiad and didn’t win, marking the end of their 30+ year dominance over women’s chess.

This Olympiad is unlikely to see a similar end of an era because out of the two countries who have dominated the Olympiad since the Polgars’ triumph, China is sending their B team and Russia has to sit this one out as their country continues to invade Ukraine. Although we won’t see the end of an era, we may see the start of a new one. The big question there being: Will India step up and claim their place at the top of women’s chess with their biggest rivals not here?

Player drought

There’s no sugar-coating it. This Olympiad will be the weakest one since 1998, not because the top players got worse but because the top players aren’t here. The only FIDE Top 10 player at the Olympiad will be world No. 9 Nana Dzagnidze.

The only players we know the reason for their absence are the two Russian players. China isn’t sending the World Champion Ju Wenjun, World Championship challenger Tan Zhongyi, or the previous World Championship challenger Lei Tingjie — who all made the personal choice not to attend. India’s top-rated player Humpy Koneru is missing. Ukraine are the defending Olympiad champions, but their top two players, the Muzychuk sisters, also declined to participate. All in all, that leaves just two players above 2500, the other being Harika, for the first time in 36 years.

But all those players missing creates opportunity for a new country to step up and be the best. Since 1992, just eight different countries have won medals. Only four countries (China, Russia, Georgia, Ukraine) have taken gold. Of the other four, only two (Poland and USA) have won multiple medals, while the last two (Hungary back in 1994, and India just recently in 2022) have just a lone medal. With only Georgia fielding their best team this time among the gold medallists in that span, we could easily see a new gold medallist, or at least a first-time medallist.

Heat check

Who has been on fire heading into the Olympiad? There are some easy answers to that.

• (No. 1 seed) India boasts two of this year’s Player of the Year candidates in Vaishali and Divya Deshmukh, the world’s top junior, on Boards 2 and 3.

• (No. 10 seed) Kazakhstan has all four boards at their best. Board 1, Bibisara Assaubayeva, just finished runner-up in the Women’s Grand Prix leg. Board 2, Meruert Kamalidenova, just earned her 1st GM norm. Board 3, Xeniya Balabayeva, just earned her first two IM norms. Board 4, Alua Nurman, just earned her 2nd IM norm. Not to mention, Bibisara is the oldest player on the team at age 20, very reminiscent of the Polgars when their all-teenage team won in 1988.

• (No. 3 seed) Poland’s Board 1, Alina Kashlinskaya, has only played two tournaments this year, but she won them both, including the Grand Prix leg just a few weeks ago. Aleksandra Maltsevskaya on Board 3 may also be peaking at the right time.

Whose form is in question?

• (No. 2 seed) Georgia’s Board 1 and Board 2, veterans Nana Dzagnidze and Lela Javakhishvili, both underperformed in their home Grand Prix leg. Do they prefer playing away from home? They did win the rapid 2023 Women’s World Team Championship, but struggled at the more recent European Team Championship where they were the top seed by far, but only finished tenth.

• (No. 4 seed) China’s Board 1, Zhu Jiner, the world’s youngest GM among women, has looked strong lately. But China made the odd decision to keep the rest of their team at home playing local tournaments rather than have them travel abroad. Then again, whatever China does tends to work out for them.

• (No. 6 seed) Azerbaijan really shouldn’t be listed here. Boards 2, 3, and 4 have all had great years, with Board 2 Ulviyya Fataliyeva winning the European Championship and Board 3 Govhar Beydullayeva nearly making her final IM norm several times. So why are they listed here? At the last Olympiad, they had basically the same team rating and several players had amazing tournaments. Yet, that still wasn’t enough for a medal.

Rogue threats

• (No. 7 seed) The United States has the most balanced team with all four boards at basically the same rating. Curiously, they were also the most balanced team at the last Olympiad. That makes them a threat to anyone. India had the misfortune of finding that out the hard way when they suffered their only loss at the last Olympiad, costing them the gold in the final round.

• (No. 5 seed) Ukraine are playing for their country more than anyone. Even without the Muzychuk sisters, that makes them dangerous. Board 1 Yuliia Osmak has been Arjun-ing her way slowly up the rating list, not in opens, but in league play, which is extremely unusual.

• (No. 12 seed) Bulgaria are the reigning European team champions. They weren’t supposed to win that. (They weren’t even supposed to play that tournament originally, as they were still by banned by the ECU.) They’re certainly not supposed to win here, but that hasn’t stopped them before. They have veteran GM Antoaneta Stefanova on Board 1 and World Cup runner-up Nurgyul Salimova on Board 2. Be warned.

It wouldn’t be an Olympiad preview without a medal prediction. I’m going with India (gold), China (silver), and Kazakhstan (bronze).

It also wouldn’t be an Olympiad preview without a check on the hosts, who field three teams. For those who root root root for the home team, the one to watch is 17-year-old Zsóka Gaál, the top junior girl in Europe, who is on Board 1 for Hungary. She just made her 1st IM norm last month and is looking for another here.

As for prominent norm-seekers on other teams, Govhar Beydullayeva is looking to complete her IM title on Azerbaijan’s Board 3 and Lan Yao is looking for a 3rd IM norm on England’s Board 1.

The Olympiad starts with Round 1 on Wednesday at 3pm. Everyone from Judit to Bodhana will be there. You don’t want to miss it!

If you’re new or you haven’t seen my previous sets of rankings, these are the Top 25 women’s chess players based on both results and performance across all OTB formats in the past two years, with emphasis on classical and the most recent 12 months.

New rankings (August 2024)

This set of rankings includes everything up to the end of July. That means it includes the Belt & Road rapid tournament (won by Tan Zhongyi), but not the Belt & Road classical tournament (also won by Tan Zhongyi).

Other big tournaments since the May rankings include TePe Sigeman, the Sharjah Masters & Challengers, Norway Chess, the Cairns Cup, and the Biel Challengers. Some tournaments that no longer count towards the past 12 months include the last Women’s World Championship match, the Nicosia last leg of the FIDE 2022-23 Women’s Grand Prix, and last year’s Cairns Cup.

Here are the rankings!

Newcomers!

Welcome to the Top 25, Stavroula Tsolakidou and Leya Garifullina!

Stavroula Tsolakidou, my top Rising Star to watch for 2024, is back in the Top 25. She was already No. 24 back in January mainly on the strength of her GM norm last year, but was pushed out in the last edition just because of one too many newcomers. I said if she just had one good tournament she would return, and sure enough she finished runner-up at the Belt & Road rapid tournament in China behind only Tan Zhongyi. This was a very strong Swiss that also featured Ju Wenjun and Aleksandra Goryachkina, making it even stronger than the Grand Prix events. Runner-up is an exceptional result in that kind of field!

Leya Garifullina has been pushing towards the Top 25 and is now finally in on the strength of her runner-up in the Sharjah Challengers. That was good for a performance around 2550-level, and she finished only behind Divya Deshmukh. Garifullina also had performance around 2550-level at last year’s Grand Swiss, where she came in 5th place!

India on fire!

India, be proud! The three biggest gainers in this set of rankings were all from India.

Vaishali is now No. 3 in the world! Unless you’ve been living under a rock when it comes to following chess tournaments, you probably saw Vaishali cause a stir in Biel, where she played in the Challengers alongside Pragg in the Masters. The Challengers was no joke. Vaishali was the last seed out of six. The other participants were all GMs over 2500, and four out of five were over 2620! That didn’t stop Vaishali from rampaging through the qualifier rounds, starting off with three consecutive wins, including two back-to-back against 2600+ GMs Jonas Buhl Bjerre and Alexander Donchenko, the second of which may be the favourite for Game of the Year. Overall, her performance in the classical was 2671, a career-best and the third time in the past 12 months she has had a GM norm level performance. The only other woman who has done that is Ju Wenjun. That’s how Vaishali got up to No. 3.

Harika is now No. 9 in the world. Harika has consistently put up solid performances all year, nothing too great but nothing so bad either. But just recently in July, Harika finally did have a great result, finishing the Turkish League as the top-scoring woman with 7/9 and a performance just short of 2600. That was the big performance she had been missing to get her back in the Top 10.

For all of Vaishali and Harika’s greatness, the biggest gainer of them all was Divya Deshmukh. Divya was only No. 21 in May, but now she’s already up to No. 11. She must have done a lot to jump that high so fast, and she did. She won the Sharjah Challengers, the strongest open any woman has won since Lei Tingjie won the Sevilla Open over six years ago. This performance was also very close to 2600 / GM-norm-level. If that wasn’t enough, Divya followed this up by winning the girls’ World Junior Championship. Back-to-back tournament wins in big Swiss tournaments, almost unheard of! Both in terms of results and performance, Divya is killing it!

Grand Prix rejects

Take a look at the rankings from No. 10 and No. 15. Besides Vaishali, that’s your group of the top up-and-coming young stars trying to make it in the world elite. Naturally, you would think they would obviously all be competing in the top women’s tournaments (i.e. the FIDE Women’s Grand Prix), right?

Only half of them are actually in the Grand Prix. Nurgyul Salimova is the only one that qualified directly, while Bibisara Assaubayeva and Divya Deshmukh are in on wild cards. The other three — Zhu Jiner, Polina Shuvalova, and Dinara Wagner — are all out. This is especially surprising given that all three played in the last Grand Prix series and did well. In particular, Zhu Jiner medalled in two out of three legs and finished third in the overall standings for the whole series, while Dinara Wagner won a leg outright. Yet that wasn’t enough for FIDE to bring them back.

Expect the next rankings in November, either at the beginning or the end. Since I’m so late with making this post, the good news is we already know some of what to expect in that edition. Alina Kashlinskaya won a Grand Prix leg, so she’ll be displacing someone. Also of note, last year’s World Cup will no longer count towards the most recent 12 months, putting a lot of players in danger of dropping a little or a lot by the time the next rankings are out. The Olympiad may be the only big tournament replacing it.

The other piece of good news is that someone was able to help me download all the tournament data for all of the players. That might make it feasible to automate the rankings in the near future. Be on the lookout for that! But in the meantime, enjoy the Olympiad!

The FIDE Women’s Grand Prix has been the most successful series of women’s tournaments in chess history, both in terms of the number of tournaments and the level of prize money. Before the series originated in 2009, there were no regular women-only super-tournaments with the top players and high prize money. Since 2009, there have been six series and 31 legs. Each leg originally averaged €50K in prize money, a number that has doubled to €100K today (including the prizes for the overall standings across all six legs).

Besides prize money, the overarching goal of participants in the series is to qualify for the next Candidates. The top two at the end of the series earn Candidates spots directly! But that’s not the only thing that’s important. Historically, the WGP has been a great opportunity for the non-GM participants to earn GM norms. And for many participants, including the lower-rated players especially, it’s a great place to gain rating.

FIDE will be looking for this upcoming edition to be a success after the previous 2022-23 edition was marred with all sorts of controversies and issues.

Series Format

The 2024-25 edition of the Women’s Grand Prix had a big overhaul compared to the previous two editions. This time, there are six events instead of four. However, each player still only participates in three legs in total (one this year, and two next year, or vice versa). Also, each leg now only has 10 participants instead of 12. Since each leg is a round-robin, this means each event is also shorter, down to nine rounds instead of eleven. With more legs though, the total number of participants is up from 16 to 20.

FIDE stated these changes were mainly to allow more players to participate in the Grand Prix series. More likely though, the real reason to have more legs was to separate the Ukrainian players from the Russian players. (The Russian invasion of Ukraine is still ongoing.) Ukrainian stars Anna and Mariya Muzychuk both withdrew from the previous edition of the WGP after just one leg likely because FIDE wouldn’t separate them from the Russians in the other legs.

Showdown in Tbilisi

This week’s leg in Tbilisi is the Ukrainian / non-Russian leg. Vaishali and Bibisara Assaubayeva are the lone representatives for Asia. Everyone else represents Europe.

That means the biggest favourites for the two Candidates spots (Lei Tingjie and Aleksandra Goryachkina, and Tan Zhongyi if she were to need it) are not here. The biggest favourite who is here is probably Vaishali, and this is her chance to capitalize with her biggest rivals not here. Vaishali has never won a WGP leg and didn’t medal either in her two WGP appearances as a replacement player. But that was before she became a GM. Right now, Vaishali has never looked stronger.

The only participants who have won a leg before are Alexandra Kosteniuk and Nana Dzagnidze, who each have won two. Neither has been particularly active in classical this year Each of them has only played one tournament: the Cairns Cup in June. That could bode well for the prospects of a first-time champion. Could it be one of the Muzychuk sisters? Surprisingly, neither of them has a won a leg before (in 22 combined appearances).

When it comes to GM norms, five of the players are IMs. The one worth highlighting the most is Georgia’s wild card player: Lela Javakhishvili. Lela already has 2 GM norms and has been 2500. If she makes her final GM norm, she would be just the second woman ever to earn the GM title at age 40. Among the others, Bibisara has been painfully close to her final GM norm a few times this year already.

The biggest mysteries entering this leg are Sara Khadem and Alina Kashlinskaya. Sara hasn’t played a classical tournament all year, while Alina has only played one (her first tournament as a mom!). Who knows what form they will be in? (It’s worth noting though that they did do well in their most recent classical events, and Alina’s was quite recent.)

Overall series expectations

Historically, the Women’s Grand Prix has been notoriously predictable. Hou Yifan won every series she played, and Humpy finished 2nd in the first five series, both of which are basically what you would have expected. When Ju Wenjun and Aleksandra Goryachkina won, they weren’t the highest-rated players at the beginning, but they were by the end. Following those expectations, whoever wins this series will probably be the highest-rated among the participants whenever it ends late next year.

Right now, the highest-rated players in order are Tan Zhongyi, Lei Tingjie, and Aleksandra Goryachkina. Is that who you would expect to win? Tan probably won’t need the Candidates spot. Lei Tingjie has never played the Grand Prix before. Goryachkina has been one of the best Grand Prix participants, medalling in five of six events, but even she limped to the finish line last time and only ended up second. With the form Vaishali has shown in the past 12 months, it’s not crazy to think she could jump up 50 Elo and steal the series.

General thoughts

Is FIDE trying to solve the problems from the last edition of the Grand Prix? They seem to have tackled the Russia-Ukraine issues (which included both players withdrawing, and one location pulling out of hosting duties) with the extra legs, so that’s a start.

The four extra spots in the series seem nice at first, but it would have been nicer if they went to young up-and-coming players. Just four of the twenty players in the series are young players: Vaishali, Bibisara, and Stavroula Tsolakidou all in this leg, and the only one not featuring here is Nurgyul Salimova. That means 16 of the 20 players are either already established in the world elite or well past age 30.

Some obvious names are missing too. 21-year-old GM Zhu Jiner finished 3rd in the overall WGP standings last year and is still the No. 3 ranked player 25-and-under, but she’s not here. 25-year-old Dinara Wagner won a leg in the last Grand Prix series, but that wasn’t enough to bring her back either. And that doesn’t even include younger players like 18-year-old Divya Deshmukh and 14-year-old Lu Miaoyi who are already good enough to participate, but now need to wait another two years (or more!) to be given a chance.

If the Grand Prix is to really be a success in the future, I would rather it be more geared towards younger players on the rise instead of mainly catering to much older players who for the most part aren’t looking to move up in the rankings anymore.

One last thought

While some young players are just hoping to get someone to sponsor them to play in the Grand Prix (through the wild card spots), one player whose own country would probably never sponsor them had those prayers answered!

Stavroula Tsolakidou, who I never thought would get the chance this time but definitely deserves it, is in the Grand Prix (and in this leg!) after not Greece, but Cyprus bid to host a leg and nominated her as their wild card selection. Stavroula was my No. 1 rising star to watch this year. Last year, she said it was her goal to make it into the Grand Prix series and I couldn’t be happier to see her get that opportunity!

Round 1 of the Tbilisi leg of the Grand Prix starts Thursday, 15 August at 3pm Georgia time. Stavroula vs. Vaishali is Round 1’s biggest match-up! You don’t want to miss it!