Vantika Agrawal joined four other Indians in the third round of the prestigious FIDE Women’s World Cup after vanquishing Anna Ushenina, a former women’s world champion, in an edge-of-the-seat encounter that played out for eight games over three days at Georgia’s Batumi. After Vantika won the first of the two-game classical encounter on Wednesday, the Ukrainian hit back on Thursday with a win to push the matter into a tiebreak. So both players returned to the board on Friday for tiebreaks, and played out six games before the 23-year-old Vantika, an International Master, was left standing while the one-time occupier of the most prestigious throne in women’s chess is on her way back. Besides being a former women’s world champion, Ushenina also holds the grandmaster title.
The FIDE Women’s World Cup is an important event on the calendar since it offers three spots to the prestigious 2026 FIDE Women’s Candidates Tournament. The Women’s Candidates is the final stepping stone to decide the challenger to compete against world champion Ju Wenjun.
The FIDE World Cup sees head-to-head knockout battles across two games between two players in classical format with each player playing with white pieces once. If the two games cannot determine a winner, players play best-of-two-game tiebreaks. In the tiebreaks, players first play two games in the 15 minutes (+10 seconds increment per move, popularly called 15+10) format. If that also cannot separate the two players, from this point on, the time gets reduced at each two-game interval unless there’s a winner. So, if after the 15+10 games, the scores are still level, players play two more games with 10 minutes (+10 seconds increment per move, called 10+10). Then the time trickles down to five minutes + three seconds (5+3).
Indian IM Vantika Agrawal beat former women’s world champion Anna Ushenina to take 1-0 lead in the second round of the ongoing FIDE Women’s World Cup in Batumi. (PHOTO: FIDE via Anna Shtourman)
After this point, if players are still deadlocked, the game enters chess’ equivalent of a sudden death: a winner-takes-all single game of three minutes + 2 seconds. This 3+2 game will be played until there’s a winner.
Remarkably, young Vantika was not the only Indian woman duelling a former women’s world champion late in the day on Friday. Padmini Rout also had dragged Alexandra Kosteniuk for eight games across all the three formats before her resistance ended and she lost. In the two classical games there were two draws necessitating a two-game tiebreak in the rapid time control. There too, there were two draws, which necessitated two more games.
Vantika will join many of her history-making teammates from the Chess Olympiad gold medal winning Indian women’s team. Koneru Humpy (who beat Khamdamova Afruza of Uzbekistan 1.5-0.5), Harika Dronavalli (who beat compatriot Nandhidhaa PV 1.5-0.5), Vaishali Rameshbabu (who prevailed by a 2-0 score over Ouellet Maili-Jade of Canada) and Divya Deshmukh (who defeated Mgeladze Kesaria of Georgia 1.5-0.5) also entered the third round, but sans the drama Vantika had to survive to enter the third round.
India’s Priyanka K was the other Indian to exit in this round besides Nandhidhaa.
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The event regulations stipulate that the 21 top seeds in the event get a bye and enter the fray in the second round while 86 players square off in the first. The 43 winners of the first round then play in the second round where there are 64 players. This meant that while Vantika’s opponent had a bye in the first round, Vantika had battled her way into the second round.
