World number-one GM Hou Yifan defeated GM Karina Ambartsumova 11-3 in the opening match of the 2025 Women’s Speed Chess Championship, followed immediately by IM Alice Lee beating GM Vaishali Rameshbabu 8-6 on the same day. While the first match was one-sided, Lee staged a comeback in hers; after starting with three consecutive losses, she turned the match around with a five-game winning rampage.
The next two matches will take place on Thursday, August 7. World Champion Ju Wenjun vs. FM Anastasia Avramidou will be at 9:30 a.m. ET / 15:30 CEST / 7 p.m. IST and GM Kateryna Lagno vs. IM Aleksandra Maltsevskaya will follow it at 2:30 p.m. ET / 20:30 CEST / 12:00 a.m. (+1) IST.
Women’s Speed Chess Championship Bracket
The tournament is a single-elimination bracket that starts with 16 players. Eight qualified through the Titled Tuesday leaderboard, while another eight were directly invited.
The matches follow the regular format, with players fighting to gain as many points as they can in three segments lasting a total of an hour and a half. They get 45 minutes for the 5+1 portion, 30 minutes for the 3+1 portion, and finally 15 minutes for the 1+1 portion. Whoever finishes with the most points, with all three segments combined, wins the match.
You can see the breakdown of the $75,000 prize fund below.
Hou 11-3 Ambartsumova
The world number-one didn’t allow much room for surprise in the first match and won with an eight-point margin. Ambartsumova did manage to nick two wins against the favorite along the way.
5+1: Hou 3.5-0.5 Ambartsumova
Ambartsumova was off to a great start in the first game as she gained a significant advantage with the black pieces, but accepted a draw by repeating the position three times. It may have been a big missed opportunity, as she would lose the next three games.
Karina was clearly better in the 1st game but takes a draw by repetition! Our commentators feel you can’t let chances like that slip against someone like Hou Yifan: https://t.co/2g1hM1naKO pic.twitter.com/9P8zs6Fm58
— chess24 (@chess24com) August 4, 2025
Game three featured a brutal checkmating attack, even after the trade of queens. White was already several pawns up, but she found a ladder checkmate to finish the game.
Similar to the above game, Hou finished the segment by winning pawn after pawn until she was up three. Hou achieved a commanding three-point lead, though she’d face stiff resistance at the start of the next time control.
3+1: Hou 3-2 Ambartsumova
This was the closest segment of the match, where Amburtsumova scored two wins.
The international master won the first game after hunkering down and defending a worse rook endgame. In the mutual time scramble, she got the better of the four-time women’s world champion and promoted her pawn:
Hou then won two in a row. The first of those two games was the nicer one, with Hou reaching a dead-winning position despite there still being equal material on the board. The difference in piece activity was evident, and White quickly got her knight trapped on b5.
Ambartsumova, nevertheless, managed to win one more game in this segment. This time, it was with a little pawn push that trapped the queen.
The Chinese grandmaster won the last game to maintain the lead.
1+1: Hou 3.5-0.5 Ambartsumova
The bullet segment was just as dominant as the 1+1 portion, with Hou only allowing one draw across the four games.
The first game was the draw, and Hou didn’t attempt to drain the overall match clock by playing out a rook vs. rook endgame—a strategy we have seen used in closer matches. She then won all three games that followed.
The last game of the match, which featured two central, connected passed pawns on the seventh rank, may remind some readers of the famous game by Louis Charles Mahe de La Bourdonnais in the 19th century (shown lower down).
First, take a look at the end of Hou’s SCC game:
And now that famous one, more impressive of course because Black sacrificed his queen:
Hou earned $2,678.57 for winning the match, while Ambartsumova made $321.43 by win percentage.
Lee 8-6 Vaishali
If you watched only the first segment and then flipped the channel off, you would have assumed Vaishali would win. She dominated the 5+1 portion, but the quickening of the time controls favored the younger player.
5+1: Lee 0.5-3.5 Vaishali
The first segment was all Vaishali. In fact, the score was nearly 4-0, except that the American IM lucked out with a draw in the first game. Lee traded bishops into a clearly losing pawn endgame, only to survive by a miracle in the time scramble.
Alice trades bishops into a losing pawn endgame, but Vaishali isn’t able to win it in the time crunch!
“That wasn’t the best-played endgame I’ve ever seen,” says David Howell after a draw.https://t.co/ORQOinlBNQ#SpeedChess pic.twitter.com/xNBbVT5spu
— chess24 (@chess24com) August 4, 2025
But Vaishali won the next three in a row. The closest was the third game of that streak, where for a moment even Lee could have won the time scramble if she had found 35.Qa2! (with three seconds on the clock). Vaishali won it.
Vaishali looked to be the favorite to win the match by this point.
3+1: Lee 4.5-0.5 Vaishali
Lee later said, “After the first segment, I was pretty disappointed, but also she played well… I just got outplayed some games.” She pointed out she had a similar start against IM Sara Khadem last year, but “typically the faster it is the better.” She played Puzzle Rush at the first break, before changing gears and taking over the match.
After a draw in the first game, she won the next four of the segment (and then the first of the bullet). In hindsight, we can see that the tilt started with the very first loss, where Vaishali played too quickly and lost a rook in two moves.
Vaishali plays a bit too quickly and blunders her rook! Alice picks up her first win!https://t.co/3vgEyNZSkZ#SpeedChess pic.twitter.com/2x0JfDO9ly
— chess24 (@chess24com) August 4, 2025
Lee won two more to tie the match and then won another to take the lead. In the last one, her passed a-pawn was surprisingly unstoppable.
Lee later said that once she’d strung together two wins, she felt the momentum was on her side. And it kept going.
1+1: Lee 3-2 Vaishali
Lee won the bullet section with a one-point margin, thus winning the match by two. Curiously enough, White won every single one of the five bullet games.
They traded wins—Lee winning first, Vaishali second, before Vaishali won again with a three-move tactic. In a bullet game, it was hard to see the upcoming fork on the b6-square, as the bishop on e3 controlled it through an x-ray.
Vaishali won the next one, and were she able to win one more, we might have seen overtime on the event’s very first day. But Lee shut it down with a liquidation into a pure pawn endgame, winning the last game and the match. Lee guaranteed $2,357,14 with this victory, with Vaishali going home with $642.86.
We won’t have to wait long for the next two matches. Catch the action on Thursday!
The 2025 Women’s Speed Chess Championship, which takes place from August 4-29, is a Chess.com event where some of the strongest female chess players in the world battle for a $75,000 prize fund. The main event sees 16 players compete in a single-elimination bracket in matches played at 5+1, 3+1, and 1+1 time controls.
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