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Anand Mahindra hails Humpy Koneru ‘Indian queen’ as she wins World Rapid Chess Championship
Anand Mahindra celebrated India's Koneru Humpy's win of her second World Rapid Chess Championship title. She defeated Indonesia's Irene Sukandar finishing with 8.5 points out of 11.
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”.
“An Indian Queen rules the board. Thank you @humpy_koneru for making us so proud. And for providing a winning and fitting finale to what has been an absolutely brilliant year for Indian Chess!” he said. (sic)
A Historic Win
Koneru won her second World Rapid Chess Championship title, beating Irene Sukandar of Indonesia in New York on December 29. Her first win was in 2019 at Georgia. She is only the second player after China's Ju Wenjun to bag the title more than once, according to a PTI report.
The 37-year-old, who finished the tournament with 8.5 out of 11 points, told reporters she is “very happy” and found her victory “unexpected”.
“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. 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 said.
“I think, after the first round loss, I was nowhere thinking about the title, but things turned out well, especially yesterday winning the four games in a row helped me,” she added.
Team India Flying High in Chess
Her victory comes after D Gukesh defeated China’s Ding Liren to win the World Championship in Singapore. Before that, 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 said.
(With inputs from PTI)
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Business NewsNewsTrendsAnand Mahindra hails Humpy Koneru ‘Indian queen’ as she wins World Rapid Chess Championship
First Published:29 Dec 2024, 09:31 AM IST
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