The Women's Candidates gets underway in Pegeia
The FIDE Women's Candidates Tournament officially began with round one in Pegeia, Cyprus. Although the scoreboard showed four draws, the games themselves were highly combative. In particular, Zhu Jiner and Aleksandra Goryachkina both came very close to scoring full points but failed to convert their chances. As a result, the event opened with a quiet set of results but a rich and tense display of chess.
One of the notable features of this year's event is that it is being staged alongside the open Candidates Tournament. This format had previously been used only in Toronto 2024, and it is now being implemented for the second time. The field includes five returnees from the 2024 edition: Tan Zhongyi, who won that tournament and later challenged Ju Wenjun for the world title, as well as Goryachkina, Anna Muzychuk, Kateryna Lagno and Vaishali Rameshbabu. Joining this experienced core are three younger players who have made a strong impact on the women's circuit in recent years: 23-year-old Zhu Jiner, 22-year-old Bibisara Assaubayeva, and 20-year-old Divya Deshmukh. This blend gives the tournament both experience and dynamism.
In line with the pairing regulations, two pairs of compatriots were matched against each other in the opening round in order to reduce the risk of collusion or conflicts of interest later in the event. That is why the all-Chinese clash between Zhu Jiner and Tan Zhongyi took place, while Goryachkina and Lagno also faced one another. The two Indian players, Vaishali and Deshmukh, were not paired in round one because of a late change: the original draw had Deshmukh facing Humpy Koneru, but after Koneru withdrew from the tournament, Anna Muzychuk entered as her replacement and took over that pairing.
The most striking aspect of round one was that several of the drawn games still featured critical turning points. The advantages obtained by Zhu against Tan and by Goryachkina against Lagno showed just how high-level and unforgiving this tournament is from day one; at this level, a slight inaccuracy in timing or a single imprecise decision can turn a win into half a point. In a double round-robin event as long and demanding as the Candidates, missed opportunities of this kind can affect not just one round but the final standings as well. For that reason, the opening day in Pegeia mattered less for the raw results than for the message it sent: no one is playing without ambition, and every half-point is being fiercely contested.