Traps, Tricks & Mistakes: Mixing Everything
The FIDE Women’s Grand Prix 2024/25 consisted of six tournaments played according to the round-robin system. The time control was 90 minutes for the first 40 moves, plus 30 minutes from move 40. There was 30-second increment from move 1. In each tournament 10 players took part. The fourth leg of the Grand Prix took place in Nicosia, Cyprus from March 15 to 24. The Grand Prix granted the top two finishers spots in the FIDE Women Candidates Tournament 2026. Players who wanted to classify for the Candidates needed to perform well in the Grand Prix. But risky play and stress play also a role and participants are not exempt from making mistakes.
In round 5, GM Harika Dronavalli had 2,5 points and placed in the middle of the table. She played against GM Elisabeth Paehtz who was at the bottom with 0,5 points. Facing the worse placed player in the tournament, was a good chance for Dronavalli for a win. However things never happen as expected and Dronavalli not only lost her game, but she made a losing blunder already on move 6!!
Paehtz was very happy with her victory as she said: “It’s my first win in about 30 games against women, so it’s breaking a long, long streak!“. She also revealed that she’d suffered allergies in Germany before the tournament and then caught the flu on arrival in Cyprus. Because of her three losses in the first four games, she decided to try something different: “I decided to play some kind of sideline—my coach didn’t even tell me to play this—but at least now it’s time to have some fun and play some lines usually you would never do in your life because, objectively speaking, this line is not very good, but somehow I was lucky that she confused everything!”
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