IM Polina Shuvalova will take on Women’s World Champion Ju Wenjun in the 2025 Women’s Speed Chess Championship Semifinals after defeating IM Alice Lee 9-5. A topsy-turvy match was too close to call for the the first two sections, and midway through the bullet Lee could have levelled the scores if she’d won a game where both players blundered a full rook. Instead Shuvalova won to take an all-but insurmountable lead with the clock running out.
The first match of the Semifinals will be on Wednesday, August 20 at 7:30 a.m. ET / 13:30 CEST / 5 p.m. IST between women’s number-one Hou Yifan and GM Kateryna Lagno.
Women’s Speed Chess Championship Bracket
The score of the final match of the Quarterfinals looks convincing, but it was only halfway through the bullet section that the outcome became clear.
5+1: Shuvalova 2-2 Lee
Shuvalova came into the match shortly after returning from the Turkish Super League, where she scored 6.5/8 and inflicted GM Zhu Jiner‘s only loss of the event—Zhu won her remaining eight games!
Shuvalova said of her preparation for Speed Chess: “I came back yesterday at night so I was just chilling and resting with my dogs and trying to sleep a lot at night—that was basically all of my preparation for today’s match.”
Shuvalova was facing 15-year-old Lee, and said of her U.S. opponent: “She’s very young and talented, she’s very tricky. She always plays very fast and she has quite a high rating in blitz and bullet. I saw her first match, she was 2800, now she’s 2900, so it’s quite a significant improvement. It was not easy!”
I saw her first match, she was 2800, now she’s 2900, so it’s quite a significant improvement.
—Polina Shuvalova on Alice Lee
Lee got off to a perfect start, playing perhaps her best game of the whole match. 12…e5! was the start of a powerful assault.
Shuvalova had enjoyed a huge edge on the clock for parts of that game, and it was a pattern that would persist throughout the match. GM Judit Polgar asked if it was a plan for the five-minute segment, but Shuvalova responded, “I played fast and bad, so it was maybe not the part of the plan!”
Twice in the second game Lee could have opened up a two-point lead, with the first occasion coming when Shuvalova overlooked a knight fork on d1 of both black rooks.
In fact both players missed that for a couple of moves, while at the end Lee was one check away from winning but missed the nuance in serious time trouble.
That missed chance was punished as Shuvalova went on to win a fine attacking game, though again with a missed moment at the very end. Lee could have saved a draw with 57…Bc1.
A draw ended the first segment with the scores level at 2-2.
3+1: Shuvalova 3-2 Lee
Once again Lee started with a win, regaining the lead by exploiting a disastrous opening by Shuvalova, who here simply seemed to forget about her g2-pawn.
The conversion was smooth, and then once again Lee looked on course to take a two-point lead when she seized a big advantage in the next game. It all came tumbling down, however, with Shuvalova managing to deliver checkmate from what had seemed a hopeless position.
Alice Lee looked sure to take a 2-point lead, but Polina Shuvalova turns it all around with a mating attack to level the scores at 3-3! https://t.co/udDyTvOUPz#SpeedChess pic.twitter.com/6EDKrCn2Ii
— chess24 (@chess24com) August 18, 2025
White had seen a +10 advantage evaporate in a single move, but the position was highly double-edged and it was easy to go astray with both sides having five seconds on the clock.
That was a tough blow to take, and in the next game Lee allowed a knight fork and slipped behind for the first time in the match.
The youngster wasn’t going to give up easily, however, and in the next game she levelled the scores with a Puzzle-Rush checkmate.
She couldn’t carry on that momentum, however, since Shuvalova won the final 3+1 game to take a 5-4 lead. Again, there was a moment that could have changed everything, with Lee missing the opportunity to play 47…Ne5+ and win White’s rook and the game.
Under five seconds, however, it was understandable that she simply instinctively retreated her attacked bishop.
1+1: Shuvalova 4-1 Lee
Lee had won the first five-minute game, then the first three-minute game, and was on course to win the first one-minute game as well, but from a powerful position she traded the wrong pawn, lost more pawns, and sank to defeat. Shuvalova was the first player in the match to take a two-point lead, and when the next game dragged on it seemed everything was going her way.
“We had intrigue until the end,” said Shuvalova, and she was right, as 40.Nd2? gave Lee the chance to swap all the pieces off for a winning pawn endgame.
The gap was again one point, and what followed was the game that would decide the match. “I was playing more or less good chess, but blundering a lot, that was the bad part,” said Shuvalova, and she gave the example of “The game where we both blundered two rooks per game!”
Polgar would describe it as, “A quite unbelievable series of mistakes and blunders,” and it’s not often you get to see both players blunder a full rook—though the action started with Lee only blundering a bishop!
That left Lee with a mountain to climb, since she was trailing by two points with just over two minutes on the match clock. A miniature win in the next game would give her chances, but instead Shuvalova got everything she could dream of—a slow, smooth win. The match was over, though the players managed to start one more game, which Shuvalova won to clinch the match by a four-point margin.
The late surge affected the prize money, with Shuvalova winning $2,500 and $1,607 by win percentage for a total of $4,107, while Lee earned $893.
Shuvalova will now face Ju in the Semifinals, while first up we have Hou vs. Lagno on Wednesday.
Don’t miss it!
The 2025 Women’s Speed Chess Championship, which takes place August 4-22, 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.
Previous coverage:
