Women's Candidates: The Final is Set
Zhongyi Tan defeats Aleksandra Goryachkina to earn a match with Tingjie Lei
The Group B stage of the Women’s Candidates is over, and with a 2.5-1.5 match win over Aleksandra Goryachkina, Zhongyi Tan advances to the finals. There she will face her countrywoman, Tingjie Lei, and the winner of that match will go on to face yet another Chinese player, Ju Wenjun, for the Women’s World Championship. (For those who don’t follow women’s chess very closely, China has had a near stranglehold on the women’s crown since 1991, holding the title for 22 of the 31 years. [Of course, Judit Polgar was the strongest female player - by far - for most of that time, but she never bothered to fight for that crown.] The current situation means they’ll hold it until at least 2024.)
Here, with my comments, is the fourth and final game of the Tan-Goryachkina match. The first three games were drawn, and then Tan won game four pretty smoothly, with just one hiccup, to finish things off.