In Batumi, all four Indian players will fight it out in the faster-time control tiebreaks in the FIDE Women’s World Cup on Friday after Divya Deshmukh lost her second game with black pieces to Zhu Jiner after defeating the world no 6 from China with white pieces a day previously. Thursday’s results meant that four of the eight quarter-finalists were decided while the four Indians in contention are all battling for the remaining four spots.
Besides Divya, Koneru Humpy will take on Alexandra Kosteniuk (originally Russian but now representing Switzerland); Harika Dronavalli will battle Russia’s Kateryna Lagno and Vaishali Rameshbabu will fight against Kazakhstan’s Kamalidenova Meruert.
How Divya Deshmukh beat World No 6 Zhu Jiner
How Divya Deshmukh lost to Zhu Jiner
The tournament format for the FIDE Women’s World Cup is such that all games are played in a head-to-head elimination format over two classical games with players playing once each with white and black pieces. If after two classical games there is no clear winner, the battle enters tiebreaks, where the time control keeps reducing until there is a winner. While the two classical games are played over two days, the tiebreaks happen on the third day.
At first, both players will play best-of-two games in the 15 minutes (+10 seconds increment per move, popularly called 15+10) format. If that also cannot separate the two players, the time gets reduced to 10 minutes (+10 seconds increment per move, called 10+10). Once again there will be two games. If even this cannot provide a winner, the time trickles down to five minutes + three seconds (5+3). 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.
Three Chinese players, Lei Tingjie, Tan Zhongyi and Song Yuxin, find themselves in the quarter-finals along with Georgia’s Nana Dzagnidze.
The FIDE Women’s World Cup offers the top three finishers a spot at next year’s Women’s Candidates tournament, which is the final step towards challenging the reigning women’s world champion.
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