The second leg of Women's Speed Chess Grand Prix started on Chess.com with the Round of 16.

Some favorites won their matches comfortably:

Kateryna Lagno  9-4 Kaiyu Ning
Valentina Gunina 7.5-4.5 Le Thao Nguyen Pham
Sarasadat Khadamalsharieh 7-3 Irina Krush
Zhansaya Abdumalik 6.5-4.5 Deysi Cori

For other higher-rated players, it was not a walk in the park, to say the least. Hou Yifan started the match against Gunay Mammadzada with losing three 5-minutes games. In one of them, she blundered an exchange and in the other lost on time. As the match progressed, the #1 female player adapted to the format and got the ball rolling; she bounced back in the 3-minutes games, got an upper hand in bullet and eventually prevailed 5.5-4.5.

Another Chinese star Ju Wenjun succumbed to Olga Girya's resilience and determination. The World Champion was leading 5-3 before the bullet portion and had all the reasons to be optimistic. After a loss and a draw, the score was still 5,5-4,5 with just 2 minutes of the match left. Ju Wenjun resigned the next game just 25 seconds before the end of the countdown, preferring another bullet game to decide the match instead of the right away Armageddon. In the last game, Girya got the upper hand with White and delivered an upset of the round if not of the entire second leg.   

19-year-old Vaishali Rameshbabu who went all the way to the match for 3rd place in the previous leg continues to take down the favorites. This time she defeated Anna Muzychuk 6-4 coming back from 2-4 and then winning the last two bullet encounters. The penultimate game turned out to be decisive: Myzychuk emerged with an extra exchange in an endgame but underestimated the quickness of her opponent’s a-pawn.

The winner of the first leg Anna Ushenina started this one with confidence too, eliminating Harika Dronavalli 7-4.