We've improved drastically in women’s chess: Humpy

An all-India final for the 2025 FIDE Women’s World Cup was a sign of the growing prowess of women’s chess in the country to go with the overall boom of the sport.

- Rutvick Mehta

Koneru Humpy.

(HT)

Yet, even as young Divya Deshmukh beat Koneru Humpy in it to become the 88th Grandmaster from India, she was only the fourth woman to wear the tag.

It came over two decades after Humpy scripted a first for an Indian female, with only a sporadic sprinkling of two more women — Harika Dronavalli in 2011 and Vaishali R in 2023 — thereafter before Divya's breakthrough.

And so for Humpy, while the health of women’s chess in India is better than ever before now, she hopes it comes with a more consistent influx of women players from the country at the top level.