Zhu Sole Leader At Pune Women's Grand Prix As Humpy Beats Divya
Drawing her game with IM Salome Melia was enough for GM Zhu Jiner to become the sole leader at the 2025 Pune FIDE Women's Grand Prix with 2.5/3. That was because co-leader IM Divya Deshmukh lost her first game, with the black pieces to GM Humpy Koneru.
Like Humpy, GM Harika Dronavalli scored her first win in the tournament, against IM Nurgyul Salimova, while IM Batkhuyag Munguntuul picked up her second win at the expense of IM Alina Kashlinskaya. GM Vaishali Rameshbabu vs. IM Polina Shuvalova was a draw.
Round four starts on Thursday, April 17, at 5:30 a.m. ET / 11:30 CEST / 3:00 p.m. IST.
Pune FIDE Women's Grand Prix Round 3 Results
Pune FIDE Women's Grand Prix Standings After Round 3
38-year-old Melia from Georgia is not one of the grandmasters in the group, but has now held two GMs comfortably to a draw – Humpy the other day, and the tournament leader today. It was a long maneuvering game that ended in a dead-drawn rook endgame on move 76. Vaishali and Shuvalova fought for it as well, before splitting the point on move 63.
Zhu leads by half a point because of Divya's loss to Humpy, who played a truly powerful game today with the white pieces. After her opponent "missed" the odd-looking computer suggestion 14...Nbc2, Humpy took the initiative, got a positional advantage and just never let go, finishing in her typical calm-but-firm positional style.
After a somewhat bumpy start, Harika got her first win. Also in this game, there were some uncertain moments for her, but eventually she managed to convert a promising endgame. She nicely outplayed her opponent in the middlegame but started to see some ghosts while getting lower on time. "I kept missing moves," she said afterward. "I tried to be not disappointed and just try to play the best."
It was Mongolia's Munguntuul who actually won the first game of the day, using a modern line in the Queen's Gambit Declined. The setup with ...h6 and ...g5 was first introduced at the top level by GM Vladislav Artemiev back in 2016, and it does look very interesting. Munguntuul definitely advertised it today with a strong attacking game:
Round 4 Pairings
How to watch?
You can watch the broadcast on Chess.com India's YouTube channel. The games can also be checked out on our dedicated 2025 Pune FIDE Women's Grand Prix events page.
The live broadcast was hosted by IM Rakesh Kulkarni and Sahil Tickoo.
The 2025 Pune FIDE Women's Grand Prix is the fifth of six legs of the 2024-2025 FIDE Women's Grand Prix. The 10-player round-robin runs March April 14-23 in Pune, India. Players have 90 minutes, plus 30 minutes from move 40, with a 30-second increment per move. The top prize is €18,000 (~$20,000), with players also earning Grand Prix points. Each of the 20+ players competes in three events; the top two qualify for the 2026 FIDE Women's Candidates Tournament that decides the World Championship challenger.
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Peter Doggers joined a chess club a month before turning 15 and still plays for it. He used to be an active tournament player and holds two IM norms. Peter has a Master of Arts degree in Dutch Language & Literature. He briefly worked at New in Chess, then as a Dutch teacher and then in a project for improving safety and security in Amsterdam schools. Between 2007 and 2013 Peter was running ChessVibes, a major source for chess news and videos acquired by Chess.com in October 2013. As our Director News & Events, Peter writes many of our news reports. In the summer of 2022, The Guardian’s Leonard Barden described him as “widely regarded as the world’s best chess journalist.”
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