The FIDE Women's Grand Prix 2015–16 was a series of five chess tournaments exclusively for women, which determined one player to play in the Women's World Chess Championship Match 2018, a 10-game match against the knockout world champion.
This was the fourth cycle of the tournament series. Top ranked player was Hou Yifan, who won the previous three editions of the Grand Prix, but had withdrawn participation after playing in the first tournament. The overall Grand Prix was won by Chinese player Ju Wenjun, who overtook Koneru Humpy at the last tournament.[1] Koneru Humpy thereby finished overall runner-up for the fourth time.
Originally the Grand Prix was scheduled as a 4-event tour.[2][3][4] However, at the March 2016 FIDE Presidential Board meeting, a fifth event was then added, which replaced the Women's Knockout championship.[5] Sixteen women were selected to compete in these tournaments,[4] though with the expansion the total became twenty, along with extras to replace the withdrawn Hou Yifan. Each player agrees to a contract to participate in exactly three of these tournaments. The players must rank their preference of tournaments once the final list of host cities is announced and the dates are allocated to each host city.
Each tournament is a 12-player, single round-robin tournament. In each round players score 1 point for a win, ½ point for a draw and 0 for a loss. Grand Prix points were then allocated according to each player's standing in the tournament: 160 grand prix points for first place, 130 for second place, 110 for third place, and then 90 down to 10 points by increments of 10. In case of a tie in points the Grand Prix points are shared evenly by the tied players.
Players only count their three best tournament results. The player with the most Grand Prix points is the winner. FIDE reserved the right to change locations and dates and increase the tournaments to six (6) and players to eighteen (18), each player in four (4) tournaments.[6] Eventually they expanded the Grand Prix but not in the contractual manner specified, deciding to add a fifth stop at their Moscow presidential meeting (March 2016), with approximately 20 players in all taking part, keeping 3 tournaments per player.[5]
Players invited base on qualifying criteria were:[2]
In May, 2016, Hou Yifan announced that she was dropping out of the Women's Grand Prix because she disagrees with the process of determining the Women's World Champion. FIDE has kept every second Women's World Championship as a 64-player knockout tournament since 2010, which Hou characterized as a "lottery." The winner of the knockout is the Women's World Champion, and then plays the overall winner of the Grand Prix. Hou believes that as the current World Champion she should defend her title against a challenger (as the Men's World Championship is decided), rather than playing in qualifying tournaments and then having to play against the winner of the knockout tournament. Alternatively, under the current setup, if she wins both the knockout tournament and the Grand Prix, she would have to play the woman who took second place in the Grand Prix for the title. In the 2013-2014 cycle, Hou was unable to play in the knockout tournament because she had already committed to play in another venue when the knockout tournament was scheduled; therefore, she lost her title to Mariya Muzychuk temporarily and regained it in a match in 2016 (delayed from 2015). Hou also said she will not be playing in the knockout tournament in this cycle.[10]
The prize money for the single tournaments and the overall series stayed the same as the previous year, that is €60,000 per single Grand Prix and €90,000 for the overall Grand Prix finish.[2]
With the objective of determining a clear, single winner to play in the Challenger Match and in the case of the top two or more players having equal cumulative points, the following criteria (in descending order) will be utilized to decide the overall winner:
Like the men's Grand Prix, the number of tournaments were reduced, here from six to five.[2]
At the third tournament it was mentioned top ranked Hou Yifan had withdrawn from the Grand-Prix. Koneru Humpy was leading the table after four tournaments. After winning in the tenth round of the last tournament, Ju Wenjun secured the overall Grand Prix win.
