2023 Chess Season Preview!
And the next World Champion will be...
We made it this far. Just two more matches before we crown another World Champion! But that’s not all that’s going on! We have a packed calendar year-round for every month except September (sorry September!).
JANUARY. The year kicked off with the Tata Steel Challengers, an elite 2600 super-tournament at the center of a whole assortment of festivities and a huge gathering of fans from the Netherlands and the world. With players like Magnus Carlsen competing in the other events and streamers like Anna-Maja Kazarian and Anna Cramling on-site, the Challengers featured none other than the Netherlands’ own IM Eline Roebers as well as India’s IM Vaishali Rameshbabu, whose brother Praggnanandhaa was playing in the Masters. In just one event, Eline got to play more 2600s than she had in her whole career. She capitalized with a victory over reigning Dutch Champion Erwin l’Ami (2627), her first victory over a 2500, let alone a 2600. Vaishali, who had two prior victories against 2600s, beat two more, both on blunders, and both Eline and Vaishali improved their FIDE rating by the end.
Around the chess world, IM Nurgyul Salimova drew widespread attention for her silver medal in the open section of the Bulgarian Championships, which was being held for only the first time in three years due to federation kerfuffles. Salimova finished ahead of six of the seven GMs, two of whom she beat with Black on the same day, and earned coverage from agadmator and an interview by Sagar Shah of ChessBase India! Meanwhile 8800 kilometres away, FM Alice Lee was playing her second IM norm event of the month thanks to the new extremely helpful 1000GM organization. After just missing out at her previous event, 13-year-old Alice crushed her opposition with 7.5/9 and earned her 2nd WGM and IM norms with a round to spare. That success puts her within striking distance of becoming one of the youngest IMs in history among women as I believe only three such IMs earned the title by age 14.
FEBRUARY. Once Wijk aan Zee and the other events finished, we jumped right into the next Women’s Grand Prix leg in Munich, the one with no Russian players and therefore the top two players in the Grand Prix standings missing. Alexandra Kosteniuk sprinted out to a huge lead with 4/4 and went on to claim her first outright win of a Grand Prix leg in her storied career. Humpy Koneru had a chance to catch her in the penultimate round but couldn’t convert a winning endgame either because of or in spite of using all her additional time. Kosteniuk now leads the Women’s Grand Prix, and with a respectable score too, given that she also did well in the previous leg with a 4th place finish.
In the world of online chess, the Pro Chess League returned for the first time in three years and with some big changes, most importantly that women are competing this time. Every team is required to field one or more women and the format of everyone plays everyone promises some exciting upsets on the horizon. WGM Josefine Heinemann (Berlin Bears) sprung the first by taking down Twitch’s top chess streamer GM Hikaru Nakamura (Gotham Knights), while relatively unknown 18-year-old WIM Trisha Kanyamarala (Garden State Passers) of Ireland came very close to beating recent-2800 GM Shakhriyar Mamedyarov (Levitov Chess Wizards). Vaishali (Indian Yogis) kept an even score across all of her matches, including against three 2600s from the Brazil Capybaras, not that that was any sort of surprise! The one she defeated, GM Luis Paulo Supi, she had beat in the Tata Steel Challengers as well. She later even defeated 2700 GM Daniil Dubov with Black in her most recent match.
Towards the end of the month, 12-year-old Lu Miaoyi returned home to China for the first time in three years and did so in style, earning her 2nd WGM norm at the Chinese Women’s National Team Championships, her first event back. Meanwhile in Europe, Romania’s IM Irina Bulmaga almost replicated what Nurgyul Salimova did the month before and shined her open national championship! Like Salimova, she finished ahead of every GM except the top seed, but just missed out on a medal in fourth place.
MARCH. This might be the most packed month of the year. A quick glance at the schedule shows the month is defined by one thing: the European Championships! The open event in Serbia was the first half of March and the women’s event that started right after in Montenegro is the second half. Many women were in the open section and some are even playing both. The open event marked Aleksandra Goryachkina’s return to European competition for the first time since Russia’s invasion, and she was the only Top 30 player in the field. Nevertheless, it was Goryachkina’s sister Oksana and fellow Russian junior Alexandra Shvedova who really shined and put themselves on the map! The women’s event last year featured two Georgian players, GM Nana Dzagnidze and IM Lela Javakhishvili, as top seeds and it looked set to do so again until FIDE pulled GM Nino Batsiashvili out to compete in the Grand Prix instead. Fellow Georgian GM Bella Khotenashvili is still the top seed! Can Azerbaijan’s first-ever medallists IMs Gunay Mammadzada and Ulviyya Fataliyeva medal again? The seeds that tend to be the favourites are #4, #5, #9, and #16, and right now those are all IMs, namely Marsel Efroimski, Yuliia Osmak, Meri Arabidze, and Oliwia Kiolbasa.
What remains in March is where things really become chaotic! Alongside the European Women’s Championship is the American Cup! Last year Alice Lee stunned the field with an impressive runner-up finish to Irina Krush, her country’s only GM. Alice, who impressed in the Pro Chess League for the Saint Louis Arch Bishops with an upset of 2700 GM Bogdan-Daniel Deac, looks to do one better this year. It wouldn’t even be a surprise this time as she is the 2nd seed!
Before either of those events finish, the third Women’s Grand Prix leg of four will commence in India! GMs Aleksandra Goryachkina and Kateryna Lagno are looking to build off their excellent first legs. Even with Kosteniuk’s golden leg, I still think they are the favourites for the two Candidates spots. But that might not be the biggest Grand Prix story because the Muzychuks have already withdrawn, likely to avoid facing the Russian players who represent the country that invaded theirs. Meanwhile, the other drama is that moving Nino Batsiashvili, a regular headliner at the European Women’s Championship, to the Grand Prix, only diminishes the quality of the former event.
APRIL. After four months of quiescence, the final match of the Candidates will finally take place. It actually also starts in late March and will finish a few days before the “World Championship” match. It remains to be seen if scheduling not one, not two, but three major women’s events to compete against each other is a good idea. If I were in charge of the dates, the Candidates would have been much earlier, probably in late February when not much else was going on. If you want a new World Champion, GM Lei Tingjie has to win. Her performance ratings of 2735 and 2626 in her last two tournaments along with GM Tan Zhongyi struggling in the recent Grand Prix leg suggests she will.
MAY. The Women’s Grand Prix was supposed to conclude in May in Bydgoszcz, Poland, the same place that hosted the only women’s super-tournament last year outside of FIDE. However, it already has been moved because Russian players are not allowed to compete there and no dates or new location have been announced. I expect Uzbekistan or the UAE’s central locations of Dubai or Sharjah to host. FIDE may have leaked that exiled Iranian player Sara Khadem, who recently became a mother, will be one of the replacements for the Muzychuk sisters but this has yet to be confirmed. The top participants are similar to the first leg in Astana. If it finishes the same way, all three of Lagno, Goryachkina, and Kosteniuk will have great scores and I expect the fight for the Candidates spots might really come down to the very end.
Later in May (or maybe at the same time since the Grand Prix dates haven’t been announced), the Sharjah Masters also returns. Last year’s Sharjah Masters was like a Swiss version of the Tata Steel Challengers, giving more opportunity for 2400 and high-2300 women to compete against the 2600s. This year they won’t get that chance since the under-2500s have been split off into a separate Challenger section. Nonetheless, Ju Wenjun is expected to compete in the Masters section as a warm-up for the World Championship. It will be her first international tournament since her runner-up in the 2020 Cairns Cup right before the pandemic! In the Challengers, IMs Gunay Mammadzada and Olga Badelka are back in the field, while WGM Nilufar Yakubbaeva may be within striking distance of the IM title!
JUNE. This month is big: The World Championship of round-robins, the Cairns Cup, returns for the first time in three years. The Saint Louis event is named after Jeanne Cairns Sinquefield who serves as a benefactor of chess with her husband Rex. It will feature the only American GM Irina Krush take on what should be a stacked field of top players, most if not all of whom are GMs. The most recent edition in 2020 was won by Humpy Koneru and the first edition before that by Valentina Gunina.
JULY. The actual World Championship match was recently announced to take up much of this month. Likely due to the pandemic, GM Ju Wenjun has rarely been seen in competition the last three years, only playing one Chinese “men’s” championship in 2021, some Chinese women’s league games, and a chess24 online Meltwater event. The successes of both Lei Tingjie and former World Champion Tan Zhongyi in that time suggest Ju will not be the favourite, but that didn’t stop her in her most recent World Championship match against Goryachkina.
Elsewhere will also be the US Junior Championships! With the recent growth of US girls’ chess, the world’s highest-stakes junior tournament will surely feature some interesting names, most notably FM Alice Lee. It’s unclear if IM Carissa Yip will participate amidst being in college at Stanford. Fan favourite WFM Sophie Morris-Suzuki, who almost won the girls’ event last year, graduated from the junior ranks, so we’ll root for Rose Atwell instead if she makes the field.
AUGUST. This month is big too: The World Championship of knock-outs, the World Cup, returns, and it’s only the second edition that’s not the actual World Championship. Alexandra Kosteniuk was the surprise winner in the inaugural edition. It was only a surprise by rating though, as she was a knockout World Champion way back in 2008. Most of the other top finishers were expected. The quarter-finalists in the top half of the bracket were all chalk, and it seemed until midway through the first game of the final that top seed Aleksandra Goryachkina was just going to coast to victory. I expect this year’s World Cup to feature some more surprises. We still don’t know how many Candidates spots will be at stake. Last time it was three. Depending on the outcome of the Grand Prix or even the World Championship match, some players may need to qualify through the World Cup if they don’t want to leave it to chance at the Grand Swiss.
SEPTEMBER. After the World Cup, things will settle down. The Asian Games are one of the few things going on, and Zhu Jiner will be part of China’s team. Although I don’t think she qualified, I wonder if Lu Miaoyi will find some way to play since the Games are in her hometown of Hangzhou. Before that, the European Youth Championships will return to Mamaia, where WIM Mariam Mkrtchyan won the girls’ U-18s with a perfect score last year. It’s too early to tell who will be worth watching, but the U-14s could feature Goryachkina’s little sister Oksana battling Georgia’s Kesaria Mgeladze if one or both of them don’t play up a division.
OCTOBER. A whole potpourri of events culminates in the World Championship of Swiss tournaments, the Grand Swiss, at the end of the month. The previous (and inaugural) Grand Swiss really set the landscape for women’s chess since the pandemic, especially so if the reigning Grand Swiss champion Lei Tingjie does become World Champion this year. The 4 GM norms at the 2021 event account for half the GM norms since the pandemic began. If the Russian and Chinese players participate, expect more norms this year as well.
Before the Grand Swiss, it’s another set of US Championships: the main ones. Irina Krush became US champion at age 14, which means this is Alice Lee’s last chance to break that record. Will Krush stop Alice herself, or will WGM Jennifer Yu defend her title? During the US Championships, the Qatar Masters, where GM Nino Batsiashvili made a draw against Magnus Carlsen, will also be going on. And at the very start of the month is the European Club Cup. Go Team Eline!
NOVEMBER. Right after the Grand Swiss is the European Team Championship. This is the tournament where Eline Roebers really burst onto the scene back in 2021 when she medalled and made her first IM norm, despite being under 2100 just a few months earlier. Eline really likes team tournaments. The Netherlands will be a great team if Eline and FM Machteld van Foreest both climb from where they are at right now. During the European Team Championship, the World Youth Championship will also be held. Because of that conflict, I don’t expect the top European juniors like Eline to play.
DECEMBER. And of course, we’ll end the year with the World Rapid and Blitz. Bibisara Assaubayeva couldn’t possibly win a third World Blitz in a row, could she? If the new World Champion doesn’t play the Grand Swiss, this could be the first event they’ll play in the new reign.
OVERVIEW. The overall calendar already feels a lot more packed than last year, when there was very little going on from February straight through May. Keep an eye out for league play too! These events are just what I know about. There are still a lot of national championships, open tournaments, and maybe even a few women’s super-tournaments where the dates and players are still unknown. With all of that, we should hopefully see everyone, and the top players especially, in action a lot more than last year. Nevertheless, FIDE’s poor management of scheduling for the Grand Prix, the Candidates, and the World Championship still leaves a lot to be desired.
Title hunts continue and you can follow which players are closing in on titles right here. Overall, the World Cup and the Grand Swiss are the biggest chances for the players to prove themselves. If we see a big momentum shift in women’s chess this year, it will happen there! I’ll see you all throughout the year!