World Cup Preview
No, not the FIFA Women's World Cup!
Are you suffering from women’s chess withdrawal now that the World Championship ended last week? Not to worry, the next major event on the landscape is already set to kick off this Sunday in Baku! It’s the World Cup — the FIDE Women’s World Cup — the biggest event on the women’s chess calendar this year. It brings together 103 players from 46 different counties all across the globe! Every player wants to win! Last time, only the top players really had any chance. But this time, maybe no one has a good chance!
Why is the World Cup important?
The World Cup is one of FIDE’s biggest flagship events. On top of that, there are three spots for the Candidates awarded to the top finishers, the most of any pathway in the World Championship cycle!
This is actually only officially the 2nd edition of the FIDE Women’s World Cup, although FIDE had hosted ten other iterations of a near-identical tournament from 2000 to 2018. That tournament was the Women’s World Championship. In 2019, FIDE finally decided to go back to the match format for the World Championship cycle. The knock-out Women’s World Championship was reborn as the Women’s World Cup to align with the open tournament of the same name, and the first new Women’s World Cup was held in 2021.
With the rebranding of the knock-out in 2021, the field size increased from 64 to 103 players (corresponding to the open tournament expanding by the same ratio from 128 to 206 players). Besides the Candidates spots and the prestige of winning the event itself, there is also significant prize money on the line. The top four (the semi-finalists) receive $50K, $35K, $25K, and $20K respectively. Even first-round losers receive $3,750, which should be enough to cover most if not all of a player’s expenses for the many who are attending without full sponsorship.
The World Cup format itself is also rather unique in two key ways. First, it is one of the only major OTB tournaments that employs a knock-out format of any kind, and second, it is one of the few major OTB tournaments where players are likely to play a mix of different time controls.
Format
The Women’s World Cup is a seven-round knockout tournament. The top 25 players receive byes and only need to play six rounds to win the title. All 103 players are seeded by rating, in contrast to pro tennis which only seeds the top players in the draw.
Each round is a two-game classical mini-match (90/40 + 30), followed if necessary by tie-break two-game mini-matches that get progressively shorter (first is 25+10 rapid, second is 10+10 rapid, and third is 5+3 blitz). If still tied, individual sudden-death 3+2 blitz games are played until there is a winner. These sudden-death games are similar to the format used in the Global Chess League earlier this month, and a change from the previous edition when the matches were decided in Armageddon at the very end. With only two games per match in the classical and the propensity for draws in chess, players are likely to reach tiebreaks at some point.
The field
The World Cup field features 10 players at or above 2500, a total of 34 players at or above 2400, and a total of 66 players above 2300. The bottom 17 players are below 2200. With this distribution, most players’ first match-ups are relatively easy, and almost any upset early is a big one. By the third round, all players can already expect to face someone who is 2400+.
The qualification routes just to play in the World Cup vary a ton. Very few players qualify by rating. The last rating qualifier was Harika (world No. 12), so even some top players you might expect to see will not feature in the tournament, possibly just because they didn’t qualify. About half of the players (53 out of 103) qualified from continental championships or zonals (i.e. continentals, but smaller regions). Most of the remaining players, about one-third (36 out of 103), qualified as federation nominees. The federations that can nominate are based on the top finishers at the Olympiad in each continent (not just the top 36 overall).
The defending champion Alexandra Kosteniuk and defending runner-up Aleksandra Goryachkina are both in the field. Unlike last time, the World Champion Ju Wenjun is playing and is the top seed.
Official bracket: https://worldcup2023.fide.com/tree
Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women%27s_Chess_World_Cup_2023
Predict a bracket: https://challonge.com/WorldCupOnTheQueenside
Who is the favourite?
No one is the favourite. I’m not kidding.
The previous edition of the World Cup was dominated by the top seeds, particularly the veterans. Six of the eight quarter-finalists (all but the Kosteniuk vs. Gunina matchup) were chalk, while the other two were former top ten players. Meanwhile, six of the eight quarter-finalists (all but the Goryachkina-Saduakassova matchup) were age 30 and above. In the end, Kosteniuk did win as the No. 14 seed, which showed it wasn’t exactly just the top seeds winning, but that may be a bit misleading since this was one of the rare occasions in her career that Kosteniuk wasn’t in the top ten. (Goryachkina was also winning the first game of that final, but gave it away.)
Do the lower seeds or younger players have more hope this time around? Actually, yes! And it’s mainly because most if not all of the top eight seeds (all of whom are age 30 and above except Goryachkina) don’t seem to have good chances!
The No. 8 seed Mariya Muzychuk and the No. 7 seed Nana Dzagnidze have both been in dismal form in classical, the former owing to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The No. 6 seed Tan Zhongyi and No. 4 seed Kateryna Lagno aren’t in bad form per se, but neither has done anything particularly good this year either. The No. 2 seed Aleksandra Goryachkina is definitely in bad form, owing to the other side of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The No. 3 seed Humpy Koneru hasn’t been in any form, as the Grand Prix leg she played was marred by other issues while the Cairns Cup she had to withdraw from. The No. 5 seed defending champion Alexandra Kosteniuk and No. 1 seed Ju Wenjun are in the best form, as seen by the former’s runner-up at the Cairns Cup and the latter’s World Championship, but no one has won the World Cup back-to-back (no one besides Kosteniuk has even won it twice) and it’s a big question as to whether Ju Wenjun could really win the World Cup when it starts just a week after her world title.
With all the uncertainty around the top seeds, does that open the door for any of the lower seeds? Not anyone in particular. A quick look at the seeds down to No. 20 shows most of them haven’t been in particularly strong form either. The one of exception might be No. 19 seed Meri Arabidize. This year, the 29-year-old has won the European Championship this year and the Bydgoszcz “triathlon” to go along with her Shusha rapid and blitz title last year, showing her strength across a variety of different time controls. Whether Arabidize can handle higher seeds in classical though remains to be seen.
The winning seeds in all previous editions have been: 1, 6, 7, 6, 9, 3, 30, 8, 9, 1, and Kosteniuk’s 14. Maybe history does favour the top ten seeds, although a reminder that all previous editions before Kosteniuk’s recent title had around half as many players.
Who gets the Candidates spots?
All three medallists in the World Cup qualify to the Candidates. Unlike the last World Cup when only Aleksandra Goryachkina had already qualified for the Candidates, this time, three of the top four seeds have already qualified or do not need the spots: Ju Wenjun, Aleksandra Goryachkina, and Kateryna Lagno. However, also unlike last time, if one of those players medal, their spot no longer goes to the 4th-place finisher. Instead, it becomes a rating qualifier awarded to the highest-rated player on the January 2024 FIDE rating list. If two of those three players medal, the second extra spot does go to the 4th-place finisher. And if all three medal, then the third extra spot becomes an extra qualifying spot at the FIDE Women’s Grand Swiss. Overall, there is still no way to qualify for the Candidates from the quarterfinals, and compared to last time, it’s actually less likely the 4th-place finisher will even get a spot.
For simplicity, let’s just assume one player in each quarter of the draw will get a Candidates spot. In Ju Wenjun’s quarter, it’s all the Ukrainian players (the Muzychuk sisters and Anna Ushenina) fighting for the Candidates spot, but only one of the three at most will get the chance to face Ju Wenjun. The greatest threat to Ju Wenjun before such an encounter is blitz queen Bibisara Assaubayeva, while Vaishali is the greatest threat to the Ukrainian players. Vaishali may have the opportunity to pull “a Lei Tingjie” and knock out both Muzychuk sisters, and based on her form, I think she would have a good chance to do it.
In Kateryna Lagno’s quarter, the main player fighting for the Candidates spot is Alexandra Kosteniuk. But there is a real chance Polina Shuvalova could stop Kosteniuk before she even gets to that Lagno matchup. Lagno herself has quite a smooth path to the quarter-finals, as her main competition by rating, No. 13 seed Sara Khadem, is likely over-rated due to inactivity the last few years.
I would love to see Humpy Koneru finally do well at the World Cup, but her quarter is by far the most dangerous. In the third round, she could already face a major threat in one of the promising young Russian players, either No. 30 seed Leya Garifullina or No. 35 seed Olga Badelka. If Humpy survives that, she would have to face one of the veteran Georgian players, No. 14 Bella Khotenashvili or No. 19 Meri Arabidze, both of whom excel at the faster time controls. If Humpy gets past both the two Russians and the two Georgians, she would have to deal one of the Chinese stars, either No. 6 Tan Zhongyi or No. 11 Zhu Jiner, in the quarter-finals. Regardless of why, Chinese players have always dominated the knock-out format (nine out of twenty knock-out World Championship finalists were from China) and it would be a real spectacular feat if Humpy could make it out of her corner to claim one of the Candidates spots.
Aleksandra Goryachkina’s quarter is not as difficult as Humpy’s, but maybe not as easy as Lagno’s. The next-highest seed Nana Dzagnidze is no threat to her, but she will probably be stopped by Harika, who is a bit more of a challenge. Goryachkina excels at classical, but is not strong at rapid. Getting her into tiebreaks (something only one player managed to do at the previous World Cup) would be the most straightforward way to defeat her, and Nino Batsiashvili as well as draw-prone Harika are both capable of that, opening the door for one of them to claim a Candidates spot.
The last two Candidates tournaments didn’t feature any players rated below 2500, but there are some decent chances for a 2400-player to get one of the spots from this World Cup, perhaps most notably Vaishali, Meri Arabidze, or Nino Batsiashvili (assuming they are still under 2500 by the next Candidates, that is!).
Narrative
Ju Wenjun and Alexandra Kosteniuk are the only real favourites at best, but winning two tournaments in a row so close or winning this tournament back-to-back are both extremely arduous tasks, and the two of them at best can only meet in the semi-final. The other half of the draw has no favourites. It will be interesting to see if Aleksandra Goryachkina can re-gain her pre-invasion form or if Humpy Koneru can power through a nightmare quarter, but it wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest if a lower seed makes the final in that half. China always dominates this event somehow, so don’t underestimate Tan Zhongyi or Zhu Jiner in Humpy’s quarter, or Ju Wenjun in general.
Overall, many of the top players haven’t been at their best lately, and it would be great to see one of them (except Kateryna Lagno) win this event and use it as a stepping stone for the future! Or will the weakness of those top players provide an opportunity for someone we’re not expecting?
Schedule
Round 1 starts on Sunday, 30 July. Round 2 starts on Wednesday, 3 August, and so on. The only two rest days are after Round 3, and right before the final. The final itself starts on Saturday, 19 August.
Let's hope Eline Roebers has a decent tournament.