HUMPY

Humpy On song
By Arvind Aaron

Koneru Humpy is celebrating the awarding of the Padmashree Award by the Government of India by winning the first three games against Deepan Chakkaravarthy to take a big 3.5-0.5 lead in the best of eight Maytas Vizag Challenger Trophy being played at Visakhapatnam. The match is happening from Feb 1-11 in Andhra Pradesh.

With four games remaining, Deepan, the Madurai grandmaster achieved a symbolic success in matchplay parlance when he managed to stop Humpy from winning the fourth game in a row. Can Deepan reverse the trend remains to be seen in the next four games. The trend is though with Humpy and there is no doubt.

Humpy, the higher rated of the duo, is from ONGC, Vijayawada and Deepan is from Indian Oil, Madurai. Both played in the National A at Vizag in December 2004 and April 2006 and are familiar with the chess culture in that city.

The show is sponsored by the Maytas Group and organised by the East Coast Chess Academy. There is also a FIDE rated event held alongside and the ambience is perfect for chess. This is the first serious match to take place between two Indian grandmasters.

After the Doha Games, Humpy has not played much and this performance so far only speaks about the Chennai training camp which has pushed her higher as a chess player. Deepan Chakkaravarthy is the lower rated and has nothing much to lose. Deepan has also played chess non-stop at Valsad and the recent Parsvnath Open at Delhi.

Humpy is perhaps going to ensure that the battle of sexes match is won by women in India. Just to remind chess fans, WGM Lahno won the composite (classical, rapid, blitz) match at Delhi beating GM Negi 11-7 last month.
 

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Published on : 06th Feb, 2007