Arkady Dvorkovich, the recently appointed president of the World Chess Federation (FIDE), has instituted a new format for the Women’s World Chess Championship. Similar to the Open Chess Championship for men, the women will now have a penetrating Candidates Tournament to identify a challenger for the current world champion. Such a procedure is undoubtedly an attempt to bring the women’s qualification cycle on par with the men’s.
The Women’s Candi-dates Tournament would be contested from late May in Kazan, Russia. The current World Champion is China’s Ju Wenjun, who also won the World’s Rapid Chess Championship last mo-nth.