"VAN" (Sports Desk - 09.07.2025) :: In 2021, I covered the first Women’s World Cup in Sochi. COVID was nearly over, and online rapid and blitz events had exploded during the lockdowns.
Back then I wrote, “Rapid and blitz game tiebreaks are the real test for today’s modern chess player. Calculation skills become slightly less important and are at a certain level substituted by much more intuition, as the time on the clock starts running low”.
Four years and two World Cups later, things haven’t changed at all. This afternoon I noticed immediately that the twenty-two players called in for the tiebreaks were very nervous and there was no small talk before the games: a lot is at stake for them.
Eleven matches were not decided in the two round-one classical games and had to be fought out in a series of two rapid games – 15 minutes base time + 10 seconds increment, followed by two more rapid games – 10/10 this time – and finally two 5/3 blitz games.
As in 2021, but also in 2023 in Baku, this afternoon the better players excelled, largely due to their superior intuition and faster pattern recognition.
Most of the favourites only needed the first two rapid games to defeat their lower-rated opponents – eight of the eleven matches – and move on to the next round, where they will be joined by the twenty-one top seeds, including several world-class players.
For IM Klaudia Kulon (pictured above), one of Poland’s best players, Batumi is her third World Cup. Advancing to the second round is an important achievement for her: she is trying to improve on her third-round best place.
She didn’t expect her first-round opponent, WIM Miranda Rodriguez Tania from Mexico, to prove such a difficult challenge, although she did receive a warning from her trainer to be careful.
Her 2-0 tiebreak score will definitely give her a confidence boost for the next round. She was kind enough to come to the media room and analyse her fine performance in the second tiebreak game.
Iran’s WGM Mobina Alinasab was also able to fast-track her qualification by taking down Kazakhstan’s WIM Amina Kairbekova 2-0. A fun fact: it’s her 4th World Cup (including the World Championship 64-player knockout) but only her first tiebreak!
Local youngster WFM Anastasia Kirtadze – born in 2009! – already showcased her skills in the recent European Championship: clearly it wasn’t going to be a walk in the park for her seasoned opponent IM Ann Matnadze Bujiashvili, playing for Spain but born and raised in Georgia.
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