‘Absolutely brilliant year for Indian Chess!’: Anand Mahindra hails Koneru Humpy’s historic Rapid chess world title win 

Indian Grandmaster Koneru Humpy was crowned Fédération Internationale des Échecs (FIDE or International Chess Federation) Women’s World Rapid Champion in New York on December 28 evening.   

Industrialist and prolific social media presence Anand Mahindra took to X (formerly known as Twitter) to celebrate Humpy Koneru's win of her second World Rapid Chess Championship title. Writing on X, Mahindra hailed Koneru as “an Indian Queen”.  

In his congratulatory message, Mahindra wrote, “An Indian Queen rules the board. Thank you Koneru Humpy for making us so proud. And for providing a winning and fitting finale to what has been an absolutely brilliant year for Indian chess!”  

Humpy claimed the title for the second time, and this is the fourth time she has finished in the top three of the prestigious event. She bagged the title last in 2019. 

The 37-year-old defeated Indonesia’s Irene Sukandar with the black pieces in the final round of the tournament, finishing with a score of 8.5/11 to claim the title. Humpy also became the second player in history to win multiple Women’s World Rapid titles, following China’s Ju Wenjun. 

“I’m very excited and I feel very happy. In fact, I expected it to be a very tough day, like some sort of tie-break. But when I finished the game, I only got to know when the arbitrator told me, and it was a tense moment for me,” Humpy told PTI after her victory. 

“So, this is quite unexpected because the whole year I have been struggling a lot and I had very bad tournaments where I just ended up in last place. So, this came as a surprise,” she added. 

Humpy’s achievement capped a sensational year for Indian chess after D Gukesh defeated China’s Ding Liren to emerge champion in the classical format World Championship recently in Singapore. In September, India had won its first-ever gold medals in Open and Women’s categories in the Chess Olympiad in Budapest. 

Humpy said her victory will now prompt other Indians to take up chess. 

“I think it’s high time for India. We also have Gukesh as world champion and now I got the second world title in the rapid event. So, I think this will motivate a lot of youngsters to take up chess professionally,” she concluded.