With a march of her king in the penultimate blitz game against China’s Lei Tingjie, Koneru Humpy, the undisputed queen of Indian chess, barged into the FIDE Women’s World Cup Final. In doing so, Humpy set up an India vs India battle for the title, with 19-year-old Divya Deshmukh having confirmed her qualification just yesterday with a win over another Chinese combatant, former women’s world champion Tan Zhongyi.
At 38, Humpy is twice Divya’s age, which sets up a fascinating clash of generations. Humpy has seen a resurgence in her career over the last year, kick-started by her winning the FIDE World Rapid Championship in December last year, her second rapid title after the one in 2019. She had eased up on her events over the past few years to focus on her daughter and family life.
“This is one of the happiest moments for Indian chess fans. The title is coming to India for sure,” Humpy told FIDE in an interview after her win. “In the final, it will be a tough game, Divya has played tremendously well in this whole tournament.”
The presence of two Indian women in the FIDE Women’s World Cup final at Georgia’s Batumi also means that there will be two Indians at least in the FIDE Women’s Candidates Tournament. The Candidates is an eight-player royal rumble to decide the challenger to the women’s world champion. Other players like Vaishali Rameshbabu, Harika Dronavalli and Vantika Agrawal will also have further chances to qualify for the Candidates in the coming months, like at the FIDE Grand Swiss or through other pathways. India had its best head count at the previous Candidates tournament when Humpy and Vaishali had qualified. That record is already set to be matched at the upcoming Candidates.
Humpy’s win was remarkable because it took her eight games over three days to breach the challenge put up by Lei Tingjie in the semi-final. Humpy and Lei played out two draws on Tuesday and Wednesday in the classical format, before tiebreaks on Thursday became necessary. There, the first two games, played with 15 minutes (with a 10 second increment per move) also ended as draws before Lei landed the first punch by winning the first game of the 10 minute (+10 second per move increment) tiebreak. Now, Humpy had to win on demand, or else she would have to battle for the third spot against Tan later this week.
Humpy didn’t just win the next game, she won the next three. The first win sent the battle into another best-of-two tiebreak, this time to be played in the blitz format with both players having five minutes on the clock with a three-second increment per move. There, both set of queens and rooks marauded the board, smiting and killing at will. At some stage in the middle game, Humpy had an advantage, then the advantage corroded away as the eval bar settled in the middle, then Lei had the edge. Both players were playing with just seconds on their clock. In the heat of this battle, on move 44, came the decisive error from Lei: she pulled back her rook (44… Ra6) instead of moving her queen closer to the king to create an air-tight defence. Humpy capitalised, and soon Lei’s queen was off the board. Now came Humpy’s moment, with both players having four pawns each, on the same side of the board, Humpy’s queen proved too overpowering for Lei’s remaining rook. When the resignation came on move 70 from the Chinese GM, Humpy’s king had marched down the board and was sitting on the sixth rank with the queen waiting to pounce and deliver a crushing checkmate.
INTERACTIVE: Humpy’s first win over Lei Tingjie (Game 2 of Tiebreak 2)
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INTERACTIVE: Humpy’s second win over Lei Tingjie (Game 1 of Tiebreak 3)
INTERACTIVE: Humpy’s third and final win over Lei Tingjie (Game 2 of Tiebreak 3)
Now Lei had to win on demand with white pieces, but she lost instead in 33 moves.
“It was a very tough match, initially I played very badly with black pieces. She always had the advantage. After the loss, it was a very difficult situation but I was able to come back. The blitz portion was in my control. I played a bit shaky in the rapid portion,” admitted Humpy.
