Queen of the Board

DIVYA DESHMUKH could not believe she had won. The match in Batumi, Georgia, had gone down to the wire—two classical draws, followed by rapid tie-breaks in which the 19-year-old from Nagpur held her nerve while Koneru Humpy, her vastly more expe­rienced opponent, faltered under time pressure. In the decisive rapid game, Humpy blundered several times in the final stretch and Deshmukh success­fully converted them to her advantage. When Humpy extended her hand with the practiced gesture of someone who had been on both sides of history, the moment landed heavily. Deshmukh had not only won the FIDE Women’s World Cup but had also become India’s 88th grandmaster (GM). The cameras caught her pressing her hand to her mouth, shoulders tight, eyes already glassy. “I didn’t even have one norm,” she said later. “And now I am a grandmaster.” This was not the arc chess culture has been trained to expect. She had come into the tournament ranked 15th, with­out a GM norm to her name. Her path to the final had gone through Tan Zhongyi, Harika Dronavalli, and finally Humpy. She had not coasted.

After two classical draws, Humpy and Deshmukh, both cautious and correct, entered the rapid tie-breaks with differ­ent kinds of burden. For Humpy, it was history: the weight of years, of expecta­tions, of a career defined by steadiness. For Deshmukh, it was momentum and the unnerving lightness of someone who had already beaten every prediction. In the first rapid game, the teenager gained material—queen for rook and bishop— but Humpy held her ground and sal­vaged a draw through perpetual check after an intense 81-move battle. In the sec­ond, with colours reversed, Deshmukh gradually outplayed Humpy in a tech­nical middlegame, gaining a pawn. Un­der time pressure, Humpy blundered a knight and resigned on move 75. The women’s world rapid champion in 2019, the player who had kept Indian women’s chess relevant through years of neglect, had lost to a girl who had learned from her and then gone beyond. Viswanathan Anand, watching from afar, called it “an amazing battle of nerves”. Judit Polgár said: “Indian chess is just unbelievable. But do not forget: it has reasons.”

Humpy’s career has been one of those reasons for over two decades. In 2002, at 15 years old, she shattered Polgár’s re­cord to become the youngest woman to achieve the full grandmaster title. Over the next two decades, she anchored In­dia’s women’s chess programme—board one at Olympiads, the standard-bearer of ambition, mentorship and techni­cal precision. And her dominance in faster formats is equally formidable: she clinched the Women’s World Rapid Championship in 2019, then again in 2024, becoming a two-time champion and un­derlining her lasting elite edge. A mother, a phoenix, a fourth-round fixture, her style wasclean, technical, minimallyexpressive.

As for Deshmukh, before she was a champion, she was already a presence. By 10, Deshmukh was already winning nation­al titles. At 11, she took gold at the World Ca­det U12 in Brazil with a nun beaten score. By 12, she was medalling consistently at Asian and World Youth events. At 16, she became India’s national women’s champion; at 18, she won the World Junior with a dominant 10/11. Her rise wasn’t always smooth, but it was bold, unafraid and ahead of its time.

Her ascent to the top has unfolded in parallel with a larger tremor in Indian chess. In recent years, with the “golden generation” making waves globally, includ­ing Gukesh bringing the World Champi­onship title home, India has experienced the rush of a country suddenly realising it is very good at something that never made television until now. India has 88 grandmasters; only four are women. The global rating lists, prize pools, sponsorship rosters, all remain heavily male. And yet, what happened in Batumi was not a blip. It was a hinge. The kind of moment that lingers in the air after the board has been packed away and the medals distributed. There is, now, a before and after. Before Deshmukh’s win, Indian women’s chess was always framed in terms of potential. Humpy, yes—but alone. A solitary outlier in a field still described in cautious plural: promising players, young stars. But not as a cohort. That has changed. In Batumi, four Indian women reached the quarterfinals. R Vaishali. Dronavalli. Deshmukh. Humpy. Vantika Agrawal missed it by a whisker. The names are close enough in rating and ambition that no one person defines the narrative anymore. This is what makes the narrative possible.

Sagar Shah, co-founder of ChessBase In­dia and a commentator who has watched the game evolve in India, says, “The fact that there were four Indians in the quar­terfinals reminded me of the 2023 FIDE World Cup with Arjun Erigaisi, Gukesh, R Praggnanandhaa and Vidit Gujrathi in the fray. This could very well show that India is very strong in women’s chess too. This was partially proven when the Indi­an women’s team won the Olympiad, but then the Chinese hadn’t sent their best play­ers. This time, Humpy and Divya played the best of the best—and beat them.”

The fact is that the centre of gravity in women’s chess is tilting. And it is not just about a winner. It is about density. The next stop is the Candidates 2026. India will send two confirmed players: Humpy, by virtue of her runner-up finish in Batumi, and Deshmukh, the champion. Vaishali is a favourite to qualify. There was a time, not long ago, when even one Indian woman in the Candidates would have occasioned national headlines. Now it feels like the start of something structural. Not a spike but a trend.

And to think that Deshmukh wasn’t supposed to win. Seeded 15th with a 2463 FIDE rating, Divya entered the Ba­tumi bracket as an underdog in nearly every match, facing opponents seeded well above her. The pivotal upset came in Round 4, where she defeated China’s Zhu Jiner, then the World No 2 (FIDE 2547), more than 80 Elo points higher. In the first classical game of their match, Divya converted a queen-and-knight versus queen-and-bishop endgame and forced resignation on move 49. It was one of the most clinical finishes of the tourna­ment. It announced that whatever expec­tations Deshmukh lacked, she was now rewriting them. From Round 4 onwards, “she was always the lower-rated player in every battle,” Shah says. “Which is why this victory is huge.” When she met Humpy in the final, Deshmukh carried all that—every rating differential, every expectation of defeat—with her. The tears that came at the end were not just shock. They were release. History had been re­written, move by move, game by game.

To be sure, Deshmukh has never been one to court safety. From a young age, her choices—tournaments, opponents, even absences—suggested a player uncon­cerned with the optics of progression. She went where the challenge was the hardest, not where the odds were kind. “I think one of the reasons she has risen fast is that she has participated in strong events,” says Shah. “She played in the Tata Steel Wijk aan Zee tournament where she encountered many tough fights. I remember a game with Benjamin Bok where she fought tooth and nail for over six hours. She blundered and lost so many games and it must have been soul-crushing in that small town, but as she went back to her room and faced fans and cameras, she would have had to regain her composure. These moments are under­estimated in the journey of a player.”

THE STORY REPEATED itself at the Prague International Chess Festival, where she entered the Challengers category against players far more seasoned. She said in an interview later that it was important to face stronger players consis­tently, a thought that has been echoed by Humpy for years now. Deshmukh’s route to the World Cup title was not linear. She chose difficult open tournaments over easier women’s events, skipped camps, and declined predictable grooming pipelines. The name of her current coach is still a mys­tery—toberevealedsoon. The choicesdon’t always make sense on paper, but they have added up, says Shah. She is also a naturally curious player, he says. “When she was 12 years old, I remember she performed well in a tournament and after everyone had left, she came to me and said, ‘Can you explain how this software works?’ We sat there for hours. She could have left to celebrate but she wanted to learn more.”

It is not enough in Indian women’s chess to be good. One must also choose. Choose whether to take the safer road— medal-worthy, state-rewarded, potentially stagnating—or risk obscurity in tougher, open fields where medals are rare but growth is inevitable. “It’s a double bind,” Shah says. “To take part in women’s events where you might win a medal and get a government stipend and prize money, or to challenge yourself in open events where you may not end up winning. Sometimes you see weaker players getting opportuni­ties, and you have to really believe that you are doing the right thing.”

Belief alone doesn’t pay for plane tick­ets or hotel rooms. And yet, there are wom­en now—more than ever—doing the harder thing. Playing up. Losing. Learning. Not being seen until they make it impos­sible to look away. Behind this small surge lies the architecture of intent. Top train­ers have begun to forge not just prodigies but systems—safe spaces for ambition. The Hatsun Chess Academy, run by GM Vishnu Prasanna, the Chola Chess Acad­emy backed by Cholamandalam Finance with coach RB Ramesh at the helm, and the WestBridge–Anand Chess Academy, are nodes in a network of mentorship. There is a pedagogic generosity in these spaces, where sparring partners are stron­ger by design, where tactics are shared, not hoarded. Vaishali, now a top contender for the Candidates, has often said she owes her early progress to practising against her brother Praggnanandhaa and other stronger players at Chess Gurukul, her long-time training ground.

But no amount of sparring can replace what is perhaps the most underwritten condition of success: the means to show up. To enter a tournament is to afford it, both in rating risk and rupees. Around the time of the Chennai Olympiad, says Vinoda Kailas, director and trustee of Pravaha Foundation, she noticed that many promising women were simply not making it to the board. “We under­stood that chess players were struggling to cope with expenses for tournaments. For women there was even less support,” she says, talking about how the 64 Squares ini­tiative was born. “We picked five women who were either performing well or were talented and breaking into the scene, fund­ing their travel and stay and supporting them in terms of advice on coaching and which tournaments to play.” The five were Vantika Agrawal, Sarayu Velpula, Sahithi Varshini Moogi, Charvi Anilkumar, and Shubhi Gupta. Not all were headline-mak­ers. But they had an edge and had shown early resilience. What they needed was a financial runway.

It is through structured training, honest sparring and financial support that the map of Indian women’s chess is being redrawn. “There is a very interesting group of wom­en players born between 2015 and 2017 and I am curious to see how they turn out. Sharvanika, from Hatsun Academy, for in­stance,” says Shah. He talks about Georgian chess—how, for decades, players like Nona Gaprindashvili and Maia Chiburdanidze kept Georgia at the centre of the women’s game. Their dominance was built on sys­temic support. But later, as the infrastruc­ture aged and younger talents were left to fend for themselves, the edge dulled. India cannot afford to make that mistake. It can­not afford to be sentimental about today’s icons if it means forgetting tomorrow’s.

In Deshmukh, Indian chess has found not just a winner, but a signal. Her path wasn’t smooth, expected, or designed for triumph. It was built in the quiet hours after defeat, in risky tournaments far from home, in choices that didn’t always make sense—until they did.

BatumiDivya DeshmukhFIDE Women’s World CupGeorgiaIndia women’s chessKoneru HumpyR Vaishali