Tan Leads Over Topsy Turvy Kosteniuk as Cairns Cup Enters Home Stretch

At the time of publication, the penultimate round of the 2024 Cairns Cup is underway in St. Louis. Today, we have annotations on key games and moments from rounds four through six courtesy of WGM Begim Tokhirjonova, and we'll have a report on the last three rounds published on Monday.

Kosteniuk had a promising position early on against Lee, but found herself on the wrong end of the decisive result (Photo courtesy Lennart Ootes/SLCC)

As mentioned earlier this week, GM Alexandra Kosteniuk was playing combative chess in pursuit of her first Cairns Cup. Since then, she finally played her first draw (in round five!), but not before losing a second (!) game against IM Alice Lee (!) in round four. Then, she bounced back with a win in round six over GM Mariya Muzychuk. In other words, Kosteniuk has lost a third of her games and is still in joint second place (along with GM Harika Dronavalli), and only a half-point behind GM Tan Zhongyi.

Below are Kosteniuk's two decisive games from these rounds, with annotations courtesy of Tokhirjonova:

Overall, the middle third of the event was unusually quiet by this tournament's standards. Save for Tan's miniature in her fourth-round victory over IM Anna Zatonskih, there were no other decisive results in any of these rounds.

Tan Zhongyi takes a half-point lead into the final rounds (Photo courtesy Lennart Ootes/SLCC)

Of course, this is not for lack of effort, either on the part of the players with advantages or the tenacious defenders. In many cases, one player was one precise move away from a win:

Nana Dzaginidze has been so close in multiple games, but is still sitting on an even score (Photo courtesy Lennart Ootes/SLCC)

In other games, it was less about finding the single "correct" move, and more about anticipating the opponent's resource in the "trap" variation.

Stay tuned for Monday's final report, with annotations by WGM Katerina Nemcova. Play continues today with live coverage at 1:00 p.m. CDT for round eight, with the final round to take place tomorrow.