GMs Koneru Humpy and Harika Dronavalli won in round four to catch IM Alice Lee in the lead of the Cairns Cup 2025. They defeated GM-elect Bibisara Assaubayeva and GM Nana Dzagnidze, respectively. GM Mariya Muzychuk also picked up her first win of the event, against IM Carissa Yip.
That leaves two draws: a clean one in IM Alina Kashlinskaya vs. GM Nino Batsiashvili and a missed opportunity in the other one. GM Tan Zhongyi had a clear extra pawn against Lee, but the American IM found a timely tactic to escape into a drawn rook endgame.
Round five starts on Saturday, June 13, at 1 p.m. ET / 19:00 CEST / 10:30 p.m. IST.
It’s still a close race with four rounds to go. All but one of the players are within 1.5 points from the leaders.
Cairns Cup Standings After Round 4
Tan ½-½ Lee
The draw was a miraculous escape for the younger player against the former world champion. With the half-point saved, she stays in the lead; Tan, with three draws and one loss, has yet to win a game.
Lee, on the black side, gained space in the center with 17…f5 18.Qd3 e5, but erroneously sacrificed a pawn with 21…Qg5? (there were two opportunities, instead, to regain the pawn). Tan found the accurate 22.Bg4! and essentially reached what should have been a safe, pawn-up position.
Ever resourceful, however, the American came back from the dead after 26.Bd4? Bxf4!—finding the one chance when it arose—to reach a holdable rook endgame. She never made a mistake in holding it to a draw, a pawn down.
Humpy 1-0 Assaubayeva
IM Almira Skripchenko pointed out early in the broadcast that the last time these two played, in the FIDE Women’s Grand Prix Monaco 2025, the Kazakh player essayed the King’s Indian Defense with Black—and got crushed. That explains why, this time, Humpy said she was surprised in the opening, which was a Slav Defense.
The Indian GM praised her opponent’s preparation and said she got nothing out of the opening. She said, “Once she got this …c5, it’s pretty much equal.” But then her younger opponent started going wrong, with the first sign of weakness being 17…Nb4?!, a move Humpy said wasn’t “required” even if it wasn’t a huge mistake.
Two moves later, 19…Kb8? was the first definite mistake. She explained, “Once I got this [20.] e4 [21.] Bf4 I was sure I was having quite a better position, compared to what I started with in the opening.” Humpy made the most of the bishop pair advantage and even finished off with a nice tactic 26.Bxe6! to bring the point home.
Dzagnidze 0-1 Dronavalli
Harika won our Game of the Day, but it’s truly a game that could have gone either way. Dzagnidze’s 17.g4?! was a move that fanned the flames, and although it was dubious, it did at some point net her a significant advantage.
Harika explained, “I think she tried g4 to get chances, but I feel the double bishops [for Black], if you open [the position], it has to be wrong somehow.” After Harika traded queens, it was only she who could be better with the bishop pair, and she won in style. GM Yasser Seirawan explained that the move 33…Bh4 34.Ng3 set up an eternal pin, one that White could never get out of.
Harika said about the finish at the end, making use of this pin, “I just tried to play simplest moves possible, and somewhere in the end this …Rh7 and …Be4 trick was like really good. She couldn’t do anything.” GM Rafael Leitao dives into this game below. (It will be added soon.)
She couldn’t do anything.
—Harika Dronavalli
With that, both Indian participants join the lead.
Muzychuk 1-0 Yip
Muzychuk scored a much-needed first win, after entering the round with just 0.5/3. “I feel like she won this game two times,” said WGM Katerina Nemcova: once in the opening and, after messing it up in time trouble, a second time in the endgame.
The first time Muzychuk got a winning position was after Yip’s 15…Rad8?, a natural-looking move that centralized the rook. But that one wasted tempo was all Muzychuk needed to unleash an avalanche of an attack. Muzychuk, likely lacking confidence after a poor start in the tournament, got into time trouble pretty quickly after that and, with three minutes, offered a queen trade that spoiled most of the advantage (she missed, until it was too late, that after 29.Nxe2 Be3+ 30.Kh1 Bd3 Black wins the exchange back).
Still, she managed to squeeze out the rook endgame with an extra pawn, explaining that her opponent “made many mistakes” in a position that should have been drawn. A beaming Muzychuk exclaimed in the interview, “Finally I won and finally I sit in the studio!”
Finally I won and finally I sit in the studio!
—Mariya Muzychuk
Both Muzychuk and Yip are on 1.5/4, a half-point ahead of Batsiashvili.
Kashlinskaya ½-½ Batsiashvili
Batsiashvili took on an isolated queen’s pawn, in the Queen’s Gambit Declined, and had active pieces to compensate for it. She thought she was better, but White managed to trade off the pieces; she said, “I could not find anything interesting.” Indeed, both sides played with 98 accuracy, so it’s hard to make progress when neither side makes a mistake.
Lee’s opposition doesn’t get any easier, as she faces co-leader Humpy in the next round. Harika, the third co-leader, has the unenviable task of facing the number-one seed Tan, though the former will have the white pieces.
The 2025 Cairns Cup, taking place from June 10-20 in St. Louis, is one of the strongest women’s tournaments in the world. The event is a 10-player round-robin with a classical time control of 90 minutes for 40 moves followed by 30 minutes for the rest of the game plus a 30-second increment starting on move one. The event features a $250,000 prize fund.
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