World Women’s Chess Cup: Humpy starts as fourth seed in her bid to qualify for Candidates

Indian Grandmaster Koneru Humpy has been seeded fourth and will start as one of the favourites in the FIDE World Women’s Chess Cup, where the top three finishers will qualify for the Candidates’ tournament.

China’s Lei Tingjie, Jiner Zhu and Zhongyi Tan are the top three seeds. Along with Humpy they spearhead the Asian challenge in the section that has seen Asian dominance now for quite some time.

The winner in the Candidates will earn the right to challenge reigning women’s champion Wenjun Ju of China in the next championship.

The top-21 rated players have been given a direct seeding in to the second round and the Indian list includes as many as four players – Humpy, GM D Harika, GM R Vaishali and Divya Deshmukh among those.

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It is an interesting format wherein 86 players will compete under the knockout format and the 43 winners will be joined by the 21 seeded players to round it off to 64. Each round will be knockout with two classical games and one reserved day for the tie-break games of shorter duration to decide the winner.

Apart from the four seeded players, Vantika Agrawal is the other Indian who can spring more than a few surprises while Padmini Rout and P V Nandhidhaa has an impressive resume to stake their claim to cause some upsets. Kiran Manisha Mohanty and K Priyanka complete the Indian line-up.

On rating Lei Tingjie has been quite consistent but the rise of Jiner Zhu has been phenomenal in recent years. The Indian women team had won the last chess Olympiad ahead of China but still on rating the Chinese women have been higher ranked and thereby favourites.

R Vaishali and Divya Deshmukh are two young players who can find themselves at the top of the tables. Vaishali has already played one candidates’ tournament and Divya recently defeated highest ranked woman player Yifan Hou, also from China, the world rapid and blitz team championship.