Ju Wenjun's Shanghai Masterclass
Rook, knight and En Passant lessons from the Women's World Championship so far
Reigning Women’s World champ Ju Wenjun has a commanding lead over Tan Zhongyi. In the first leg of the World Women’s Championship match, hosted in Shanghai, I was struck by several key moments that can teach us about “first principles.” This is quite the buzz phrase these days.
First principles thinking means deducing fundamental truths—in this case about the chess pieces—without relying on analogies, material count, or things we’ve read. You don’t have to be a strong player, or even a tournament player, to think about chess in this way. In fact, the best time to think from first principles is at the very beginning. In his book Move by Move, Maurice Ashley writes about a journal entry he penned almost two decades after learning chess, “Today I saw a knight again for the first time….I studied how easily a knight could be trapped by an opposing king and knight. To think that such simple mysteries are still present on the chessboard stuns me.” Ashley goes on to explore the power of “seeing everything through a beginner’s eyes.”
How can you translate this to your own game, or in teaching others? Rather than considering the rook as a unit worth five pawns, think about the pure power of the piece in different types of positions.
This round two position will help you do that.
Ju Wenjun, playing Black, must find a narrow path to the draw.
40…b4! is the only move that keeps Black alive. It gives the rook crucial escape squares while cutting off the white king.
Positions like this show why rooks love endgames: they thrive on open files and ranks.
In time pressure, Ju Wenjun played 40…Ke8? and got squashed by the powerful white king and rook, in her only loss of the match so far. They often say there’s no luck in chess, but that’s wrong. If this position occurred on move 41, rather than 40, then White would receive the final 30 minutes of the time control, just in time for the critical moment.
When analyzing with my son, we happened on this tragic analysis position.
Compare this to the position after 40…b4. The black rook is literally checkmated: the horror of a rook getting no oxygen.
To finish off the game, Tan Zhongyi took her rook on a journey- Rook to h3 to b3 check to b2 to e2.
This type of construction is often called a bridge, but this implementation feels more like an umbrella to me1. The white king will step to e7, when the rook on e2 stops all the checks.
That Cool En Passant Guy
In round 5 and 6, Ju Wenjun pulled ahead with back to back victories, including one of her classic positional dominations.
Because of the pawn on f5, and the subsequent g-pawn push, the black knight is a quasi outpost—unassailable by enemy pawns. After some twists and turns, Ju Wenjun found herself in a crushing endgame, when White tried 35.f4
At the amateur level, this could work by inducing black into “en passant”, which would alleviate White’s structural and spatial issues. Alas, contrary to many memes on anarchy chess, playing En passant is not forced. That said, assuming en passant will be played is a common bias. For example, in a game I’m playing against PokerStars Pro Lex Veldhuis, the following position arose in a variation.
If En passant was forced, my queen would be cooked.
Plenty of us err in calculations involving En passant even if not totally conscious. New players might miss the move all together—but once learning it cold, they’re compelled by it. It’s a classic case of over-correction. Or as my son put it: “Of course I was going to capture — I wanted to be that cool En passant guy.” Let’s call it the Cool En Passant Guy Fallacy2.
Unfortunately for Grandmaster Tan Zhongyi, none of this applies at the World Championship level. Ju Wenjun declined En passant without incident, keeping her grip on the winning position with 35…Ke6.
This victory gave Ju Wenjun a commanding score at the halfway point3, so Tan Zhongyi will need to come out blazing in the second half. Can she do it? Probably not, but I expect fireworks.
I recorded a video to elaborate on the positions above for paid subs.