The closed women's tournament of the Sparkassen Chess Trophy 2025 still had one open place. Deimanté Daulyté-Cornette will compete against Elisabeth Pähtz, Dinara Wagner and Miaoyi Lu in August.
Daulyté-Cornette earned the invitation herself. Thanks to her close relationship with Artur Yusupov, a partnership has developed in recent years with the Open International Chess Tournament on International Women's Day in Augsburg. Together with the Jussupow Schachschule gGmbH, women's chess is promoted in Germany.
So it was clear that the winner of the strong A group from Augsburg would once again be invited to the International Dortmund Chess Days. And the reigning French champion gladly accepted the invitation to compete against the two top German players and the Chinese super talent at the Alte Schmiede cultural centre.
Daulyté-Cornette clearly dominated the Augsburg tournament for a long time. She achieved the decisive victory with Black in round 6 against Kateryna Dolzhykova, who was tied on points. With Black (photo), she gradually gained positional advantages in the middlegame before winning the advantageous endgame: The game
Although she suffered her first setback with a defeat in the penultimate round, Daulyté-Cornette secured the tournament victory with a full point advantage over her rivals.
The Dortmund women's tournament is held on stage parallel to the strong A-Open of the Sparkassen Chess Trophy. Six games of classical tournament chess are then played in double round robin format. Not only the format, but also the thinking time will be new in this event in 2025: Increments of 30 seconds per move will only be available from move 41, so the time allocation up to move 40 will make for extra excitement. It is very difficult to pick a favourite among the 4 participants, as anyone can beat anyone. So it will be exciting to see whether Daulyté-Cornette can carry the tailwind of her recent successes with her.
The Lithuanian-born player has already celebrated title after title in 2024: championship in the German Chess League with her club Schwäbisch-Hall, tournament victory in a strong rapid chess tournament in Norway, tournament victory in a closed women's tournament in Graz, the French team championship with Chartres and the French women's individual championship! The Women Grandmaster has been playing for the French Chess Federation since 2021. The International Dortmund Chess Days fit all the better into the busy player's annual calendar as her husband will also be playing. GM Matthieu Cornette will be taking part in the A-Open at the same time and will want to play for the tournament victory at the top boards of the open sitting as close to his wife as possible.