FIDE Women’s World Cup final: Divya holds Humpy, tiebreaker next

BATUMI: International Master Divya Deshmukh gave nothing away and held higher-ranked Grandmaster and compatriot Koneru Humpy to an easy draw to force the final of the Women’s Chess World Cup into the tie-breaker, here on Sunday.

The tie-breaker, which will be a series of shorter-duration games, will be played on Monday to determine the winner.

Divya, who did not make utmost use of her promising opening in the first game on Saturday, was far more composed against a Queen pawn opening by transposition employed by her opponent in game 2.

Humpy got the optical advantage with her pair of bishops out of the opening but Divya knew that if she placed her knights perfectly, white will not be able to create many problems.

As it happened in the game after two minor pieces, the pair of rooks also changed hands and the queen-and-minor-piece endgame only offered little hope.

Humpy tried to make some headway with a pawn sacrifice in the endgame but in the process her bishop pair was gone, and though a pawn plus, Divya had to cover some weaknesses.

After the dust settled, Humpy recovered the pawn and Divya repeated the position through checks to sign peace in 34 moves.

The tiebreaker will see two games of 15 minutes each with a 10-second increment after every move. If the scores are still level, the players will play another set of 10-minute games with a 10-second increment. If the tie doesn’t get resolved, it will be two more games of five minutes with three-second increment after every move.

Should the deadlock continue, one more set of three-minute games with a two-second increment per move will be played to decide the winner.

During the post-game interaction with the broadcaster, Divya seemed upset with the mistakes she made in game 1 on Saturday, where she said she invariably kept making the wrong choices.

“I was quite disappointed with the first game obviously because I saw everything and I just always ended up making the wrong choice, and it was quite a pity. The first game didn’t go my way and even though it was a draw it kind of felt like a loss,” said Divya.

Asked how a player like her forgets about the previous game and focus on the next game, she said in a game like chess it was “absolutely necessary” to come out with a fresh mindset.