Two Pawns Down, King on the Run: How Tan Zhongyi Refused to Lose in St. Louis

Imagine you're winning a chess game. Not just a little ahead — you're up two whole pawns, your opponent's king is exposed, and the position is yours to close out. Now imagine losing that game anyway.

That's almost exactly what happened to GM Divya Deshmukh on Monday in St. Louis. And the player who escaped with the point wasn't just anyone — it was the woman she was chasing up the standings.

A tournament leader in "huge trouble"

The 2026 Cairns Cup is one of the strongest women's chess tournaments in the world, and after seven rounds, GM Tan Zhongyi was firmly in front. But round seven nearly ended her run at the top. GM Tan Zhongyi continues to lead the 2026 Cairns Cup on 5.5/7, though she was in huge trouble against GM Divya Deshmukh, before winning from a much worse position to extend her lead to a full point over GM Bibisara Assaubayeva and IM Alice Lee.

So what went wrong for Divya? Playing a Vienna Game, she outplayed the tournament leader and reached a winning position with two extra pawns — but she needed to find a difficult move, 25.Ba7!!, to trade queens and lock the game down. Missing it, she allowed a pawn storm against her own king, with the queens still on the board.

For anyone new to chess: a "pawn storm" is when a wall of pawns marches forward together to attack the enemy king — it's a bit like a slow, unstoppable tide. Once queens are still on the board and a king is caught in the open, things can go from "completely winning" to "completely lost" in just a handful of moves.

That's exactly what happened. It was the white king that ended up hunted, and even though Tan allowed an objectively drawn position by move 31, Divya had just two minutes left on her clock by that point. In classical chess, where games can last four or five hours, running short on time while trying to calculate your way out of a storm is brutal. Divya couldn't hold on, and the point — and a chunk of her tournament — slipped away.

The teenager who almost snuck past her

Tan wasn't only fighting off Divya. Just one board away, a 16-year-old was making her own case to take over the lead. At some point in round seven it seemed possible that Tan would lose and Alice Lee, the lowest-rated player in the field, would overtake her. Lee, playing against former world number-one GM Anna Muzychuk, won a clean pawn but couldn't convert the resulting five-versus-four pawn endgame, and the game ended in a draw.

It's a reminder of how thin the margins are at this level. Winning an extra pawn doesn't guarantee anything — turning that small edge into a full point takes precision most club players never need, and even elite grandmasters sometimes can't find it under pressure.

Meanwhile, one player quietly kept her perfect record intact. GM Bibisara Assaubayeva beat IM Stavroula Tsolakidou in a game where both sides missed cleaner ways to finish it off, but the Kazakh grandmaster ground out the win with an extra pawn anyway — the human way, not the computer way. She remains undefeated and is now just a point behind Tan, with a chance to play the leader herself in round eight — though she'll have the tougher black pieces.

Next door, a different kind of drama

While the women's field produced fireworks, the open Sinquefield Cup — running in the same hall — had its own storyline. GM Wesley So continued to lead on 4.5/7 after an almost instant draw with GM Anish Giri, trailed half a point behind by GMs Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, Fabiano Caruana, and Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu. The only decisive game of the day belonged to GM Javokhir Sindarov, who beat GM Vincent Keymer.

That win mattered more than the standings suggest. For Sindarov, a win with the black pieces was necessary just to stay in contention for the season-ending Grand Chess Tour Finals. He chose a sharp, risky opening and explained his mindset plainly: "If I will lose, I will learn something, but maybe if I win I will get some chances." It paid off — and remarkably, it was the world championship challenger's first win in the event. Even players fighting for the game's biggest prize can go rounds without finding the win column.

The bigger picture

These two events are more than just a week of games — they carry real weight. The 2026 Sinquefield Cup is the fifth and final leg of the 2026 Grand Chess Tour, a 10-player round-robin with a $475,000 prize fund, where results count toward qualifying for the season-ending Tour Finals. It runs alongside the 2026 Cairns Cup, a 10-player round-robin for some of the strongest women in the world, worth $250,000.

A round-robin, for those unfamiliar, simply means every player faces every other player once — no knockouts, no shortcuts. Over nine long rounds, small cracks turn into big swings, which is exactly why a single missed move — like Divya's on move 25 — can end up deciding who lifts the trophy.

With two rounds left in each event, nothing is settled. Tan leads by a full point but faces her closest challenger, Assaubayeva, next. Lee and Divya both still have chances to climb back. And in the open section, seven players sit within a single point of Wesley So.

Chess has a reputation for being slow and quiet. Round seven in St. Louis was neither.