Divya Deshmukh, 19-year-old from Nagpur, made history by becoming the first Indian and the youngest ever to win the Fide Women’s Chess World Cup in Georgia’s Batumi. In the all-India final, she took control of the clock to surprise reigning women’s world rapid champion, 38-year-old Koneru Humpy, 2.5- 1.5. Divya took the rapid route to glory after drawing both her classical games with Humpy on Saturday and Sunday.
Divya, who was the world’s youngest Woman Fide Master in 2013, also became only the fourth Indian woman to earn the GM title after Humpy, R Vaishali and Harika Dronavalli. With this win, Divya took her tally of international gold medals to 24 while representing India on 41 occasions. In her 14-year journey, she has conquered the world on four occasions: In 2014, she won the under-10 world title before becoming U-12 world champion in ’17. Last year, she was crowned world junior champ.
Divya will receive $50,000 as their prize money on top of the coveted trophy. The Indian players, who were left tied at 1-1 each after the two classical games in the final, entered the tiebreaks to decide the ultimate winner. So, it all boiled down to two Rapid matches of 10 minutes with a 10-second increment after every move.
Having won the toss the previous night, Divya once again got the luck of the draw, opting to start the tiebreaks with the white pieces in the first Rapid game. But the youngster failed to capitalise on the advantage and opted to play out a draw. With the scores still tied at 1.5-1.5 each, it boiled down to the second Rapid game, which started off in similar fashion. For the longest time, the game seemed to be headed towards yet another draw. But, a costly blunder from Humpy on move 40 opened the window for Divya, who started to attack the veteran viciously.
Despite a spirited defense from Humpy, her blunder proved to be too costly to recover from, as she finally resigned on move 75.
