World no.2 Chess Champion Koneru Hampy, who hails from Vijayawada, beat her Polish opponent Monika Socko to move into the finals of the online Chess Olympiad on Saturday. She played black pieces against Monika, meaning that she had four minutes to play, which is a minute lesser than the latter. Ideally, she had to draw to win. Humpy did more than what was required, winning the Catalan game in 73 moves; she checkmated Socko, promoting her pawn to have two queens.
It wasn’t an easy win, since she had lost in the previous round, and had the score at 2-4. But she bounced right back from it and defeated her Polish counterpart in the Armageddon round, which is the tie-breaker. This launched her into the finals after she had a crushing win at 4.5-1.5 points respectively. This win is especially significant since today is the National Day for Sports, and also because her other Indian counterparts had lost the first round as well.
The second semifinal is to take place on Sunday, where India is all set to play against Russia and the United States. Hampy has been crowned the queen of Indian Chess for quite some time now, and true to her reputation, she has successfully entered the second semifinal, along with Harika, Vishwanathan Anand, and Captain Vidit Gujarati.
Former world champion Viswanathan Anand came into his own with a much-needed win over Jan-Krzystof Duda in 78 moves in the second round after losing to his opponent in the first round. Sadly, the chess childhood prodigy Pragnanandha lost to Igor Janik.