Ju Wenjun beat Tan Zhongyi in game eight of her Women's World Chess Championship defence to take an all but unassailable 6-2 lead, she needs only a draw to finish the match. Today was really must win for Tan and she switched to 1.e4 but the variation couldn't be described as all or nothing. As with many of these games Ju equalised, got a little better, and then Tan subsided to defeat not seeming to know whether she should to try to hold the position or continue to look for winning chances. 25.Qd4?! keeping Queens on was a mistake but 25.exf5 would most likely have led to a quick draw, 28.c4? was the losing move. Ju Wenjun was super alert and found 28...e3! which led to the creation of a dangerous passed pawn and a winning endgame which she handled perfect. Tan resigned on move 54. This has obviously been extremely painful for Tan but halting a losing run in a high level match where you're trying to stop losing but also needing to strike back is a really tough task. This is far from the first example of this kind of collapse and it's happened to some very fine players.

FIDE Women's World Chess Championship 2025 (8)

Mark Crowther (Mon Apr 14 12:36:00 2025)