After Divya Deshmukh, Koneru Humpy has reached the final of the Women’s Chess FIDE World Cup. Koneru Humpy defeated China’s Tingjie Lei in the tie breaker in the semi-finals to secure her place in the final.
This will be the first time that both the players in the World Cup final will be Indians. This tournament is being played in Batumi, Georgia.
In the tiebreaker, two games of 15 minutes each are played with extra time. After that the next two tiebreaker games are of 10 minutes each. Lei took the lead by winning the first game but despite being in a difficult position, Humpy won the second game and equalized the match again. In the third set of the tie-break match, Humpy started with white pieces in the first game and won it by defeating Lei in all departments of the game.
After winning the first game, Humpy needed just a draw to reach the final and she won it to make it to the title match. Earlier both the games were drawn. After which a tie breaker was organized on Thursday. In the second game Humpy had white pieces, but she could not break Lei’s strong defense.
Divya defeated former world champion Tan Zhongyi by a margin of 1.5-0.5 in the semi-final match. 19-year-old Divya performed brilliantly while playing with white pieces and defeated her in 101 moves. In the second game, she got the advantage of playing with white pieces.
He applied constant pressure in the middle game and forced Tan Zhongyi into mistakes. White (Divya) was in a winning position with the queen exchange, but even with the queen on the board her position was too strong. Zhongyi then made a comeback and took the lead. Due to lack of time, Zhongyi made a wrong move, after which Divya took the lead of two pawns. In the last game, Zhongyi had many chances for a draw, but she could not capitalize on them.
The first game was a draw. In the first game, Divya played with black pieces. This game was a draw. Divya adopted a strategy to balance the game at the beginning of the first game. Zhongyi started the game with the ‘Queen’s Gambit Declined’ opening In which Divya maintained the balance by constantly changing the pieces. Zhongyi also seemed satisfied with this position, where Black got some activity.