Chess World Cup: 21-year-old Indian Vantika Agrawal stuns former world champion, pockets Rs 5.8 lakh so far

Indian International Master (IM) Vantika Agrawal advanced to the third round of the FIDE Women's World Cup 2025 in Batumi, Georgia, after defeating former world champion Anna Ushenina of Ukraine in a thrilling tie-breaker match with a score of 4.5-3.5 on Friday.The second-round match between Vantika and Ushenina went into tie-breakers after both players won one Classical game each. Vantika won the first Rapid tie-breaker but lost the second, ultimately securing victory in the Blitz section by winning the first game and drawing the second."Just relaxed," Vantika told FIDE after reaching the next round. "In the Classical section, I won the first match. In the second game, I was much better, but somehow, in the time crunch, I ended up losing.

Again, in the 10 + 10 I got the lead with the black and drawing with white should not have been a difficult task, but yeah, then scores got levelled and I won in the blitz section."

"In the earlier games, the mistake I made was that I was thinking a draw was enough, but here I was thinking I just had to play well. I was not thinking about the result. I think that kind of helped me a lot," Vantika explained about her winning strategy.

The Indian has secured prize money of $6,750 (approx. Rs 5.8 lakh) for reaching Round 3, where she will face former World Rapid and three-time World Blitz Women's champion GM Kateryna Lagno of Russia.International Master Padmini Rout was eliminated after losing to former world champion Alexandra Kosteniuk of Switzerland in Round 2. Women's International Master Priyanka K also exited the tournament following losses in both Rapid tie-break games against Poland's Klaudia Kulon.Four other Indian players have already progressed to the third round of the tournament. Koneru Humpy will face Klaudia Kulon of Poland, while D Harika will play against Greece's Stavroula Tsolakidou.R Vaishali is set to compete against Carrisa Yip of the United States, and Divya Deshmukh will take on Serbia's Teodora Injac in their respective third-round matches.