Women's FIDE Grand Prix: R Vaishali to face Koneru Humpy in opener

Pune: Last year, K Humpy and R Vaishali had played the eight-player Women’s Candidates tournament, held concurrently with the Open (men) event, in Toronto. This time, they face off in the first round of the fifth leg of the Women’s FIDE Grand Prix in Hadapsar, eastern Pune from Monday.
The top two players from an elite field of 20 after the completion of the six-leg GP series qualify for the next year’s Candidates tournament. Each GP consists of nine rounds and 10 players, and one player can play a maximum of three Grand Prix.
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Both Humpy and Vaishali could not qualify for the last Candidates via the GP series. Vaishali made the grade by topping FIDE’s Grand Swiss League event and Humpy clinched it via the rating strength. The rating spot is replaced by the winner from the FIDE Women’s event 2024-25 for the next cycle.
The Pune event will be Vaishali’s second of the year. She is expected to play the last event in Austria from May 5 to increase her GP points tally. However, it will be Humpy’s third and last GP here. The current GP series table-toppers, Aleksandra Goryachkina (Russia) and Bibisara Asaubayeva (Kazakhstan), have already finished their three events. If Humpy manages to finish strong here, she could occupy the provisional second spot.
The first-ever woman GM from India, now women’s world rapid champion at 38, had finished second in the third-leg Monaco leg.
Ukrainian Anna Muzhychuk, absent from the Pune event and expected to play the sixth and last leg, and Russian Alina Kashlinskaya, are the strong contenders for the top-two spots.