Divya Deshmukh managed to win her first game at the FIDE Grand Swiss tournament, inflicting a crushing defeat on Egyptian grandmaster Amin Bassem, who has 158 ELO rating points more than the Indian teenager, who only recently became a GM. Bassem on the other hand is Africa’s highest rated and he also is a medical doctor by profession with a peak rating of 2700+.
The world no 94 Egyptian held an edge in the game from the 10th move itself, which became a substantial advantage by the 16th move, against 19-year-old Divya, who is ranked 761st among active players. The gulf in rankings between Bassem, who can stake a claim to being the best Arab chess player in history, and Divya is 666 spots.
“I completely forgot my prep today. The opening was just bad,” Divya remarked to ChessBase after her win. In the previous three games, she’d drawn twice and lost once.
Later, in an interview with FIDE, Divya said: “The opening was quite a rough start for me. I’m happy that I managed to recover. He put so much pressure on me! Of course, he’s the best in Africa and he’s quite strong, so it was a tough game.”
Despite the early lapse in memory, the resourceful teenager from Nagpur managed to find moves that kept her in the game before unleashing a blistering kitchen-sink of an attack at her opponent’s king which eventually led to a withdrawal in the 47th move from the Egyptian. There were several eye-catching moves from Divya in the game, none more so than when she captured a pawn on g4 with her rook (33… Rxg4), in essence offering up the rook as a sacrifice just so she could remove the h file defender that was protecting Bassem’s king.
“I loved that move!” she remarked with a smile.
Divya Deshmukh talks to Egyptian grandmaster Amin Bassem after defeating him in their round 4 game at the FIDE Grand Swiss tournament in Samarkand. (PHOTO: FIDE/Michal Walusza)
Despite the rook sac, when the resignation came from Bassem, Divya was two pawns and a rook up on the board, a testament to her attacking prowess. It was right after that move to sacrifice her rook that Divya’s pieces had launched an all out attack. They started harassing Bassem’s monarch: the queen, the rook and the bishop were soon forming a claustrophobic circle around the rival king that even Houdini would have struggled to escape from. So relentless was her attack that by the 43rd move, checkmate was inevitable.
INTERACTIVE: How Divya Deshmukh defeated Amin Bassem
The other woman in the open section at Grand Swiss, Aleksandra Goryachkina, also managed to win her game against Dmitrij Kollars.
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“It’s a good day for women in the open section,” remarked Divya.
“The victory was a relief for me, I was wondering when a win would come! I’m glad that it came today! The first game at the event (versus Abhimanyu Puranik, who helped her win the FIDE Women’s World Cup in July as a second) was tough, but I learnt a lot. It also helped me. I just had to calculate so much in the first game! I think that training helped me in the other ones,” Divya added.
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