Chess WC: 21-yo Indian stuns former world champion, pockets Rs 5.8 lakh so far

Indian International Master (IM) Vantika Agrawal, 23 precocious to the 3rd circular of the FIDE Women's World Cup 2025 successful Batumi, Georgia, aft defeating erstwhile satellite champion Anna Ushenina of Ukraine successful a thrilling tie-breaker lucifer with a people of 4.5-3.5 connected Friday.The second-round lucifer betwixt Vantika and Ushenina went into tie-breakers aft some players won 1 Classical crippled each. Vantika won the archetypal Rapid tie-breaker but mislaid the second, yet securing triumph successful the Blitz conception by winning the archetypal crippled and drafting the second."Just relaxed," Vantika told FIDE aft reaching the adjacent round. "In the Classical section, I won the archetypal match. In the 2nd game, I was overmuch better, but somehow, successful the clip crunch, I ended up losing.

Again, successful the 10 + 10 I got the pb with the achromatic and drafting with achromatic should not person been a hard task, but yeah, past scores got levelled and I won successful the blitz section."

"In the earlier games, the mistake I made was that I was reasoning a gully was enough, but present I was reasoning I conscionable had to play well. I was not reasoning astir the result. I deliberation that benignant of helped maine a lot," Vantika explained astir her winning strategy.

The Indian has secured prize wealth of $6,750 (approx. Rs 5.8 lakh) for reaching Round 3, wherever she volition look erstwhile World Rapid and three-time World Blitz Women's champion GM Kateryna Lagno of Russia.International Master Padmini Rout was eliminated aft losing to erstwhile satellite champion Alexandra Kosteniuk of Switzerland successful Round 2. Women's International Master Priyanka K besides exited the tourney pursuing losses successful some Rapid tie-break games against Poland's Klaudia Kulon.Four different Indian players person already progressed to the 3rd circular of the tournament. Koneru Humpy volition look Klaudia Kulon of Poland, portion D Harika volition play against Greece's Stavroula Tsolakidou.R Vaishali is acceptable to vie against Carrisa Yip of the United States, and Divya Deshmukh volition instrumentality connected Serbia's Teodora Injac successful their respective third-round matches.