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Both players have already qualified for the prestigious Candidates Tournament to be held next year on account of making it to the final of the World Cup and with an Indian winner assured here, it will be the first time an Indian woman will be clinching the coveted title.

Mumba: The Nagpur-born Divya Deshmukh and veteran Koneru Humpy played out an exhilarating draw in the second classical game of the Women’s Chess World Cup final in Batumi, Georgia and thereby pushed the contest to the tie-breaker on Monday.

Both players have already qualified for the prestigious Candidates Tournament to be held next year on account of making it to the final of the World Cup and with an Indian winner assured here, it will be the first time an Indian woman will be clinching the coveted title. It was a game of cat and mouse between the experienced Humpy and the prodigious Divya which eventually ended in a draw after 34 moves on the basis of repetition.

Earlier, after 19 moves, all indications were pointing towards a draw when Deshmukh and Humpy exchanged rooks following a trade in the 19th move. However, in the 21st move of the game, Humpy took a huge gamble by pulling her queen back to f4 from f5 and refused to go for trading the Queen when Deshmukh had presented her a chance to do the same earlier. At this point, both players had equal number of pieces when the 38-year-old Humpy made the Queen move and that was the clearest indication that she wanted to push for an outright victory instead of settling fora draw and pushing the contest to a tie-breaker.

Both players had started off the game with some conservative moves but later on took some aggressive steps to exchange rooks. In the 22nd move, Deshmukh recalibrated her strategy before moving the Knight to e4. Humpy snapped up the Knight with her Bishop which in turn was lapped up by the pawn as the game simplified itself and both players steadied their respective positions. Thereafter, the veteran was keeping the pressure up on the 19-year-old.

Although, Deshmukh went with a simple step of pushing her pawn, which was right in front of the king, ahead. The pawn moved from g7 to g6 and it ended up blocking Humpy’s path for a possible checkmate but she still has a couple of more options from here on. Humpy went for a check from c8 using her queen and Deshmukh had to keep calm heading forward. After Divya (Kh7) and Humpy (Qc7) made the 27th and 28th moves, the clock indicated the two just had under 20 minutes to decide the fate of the game. Earlier, on Saturday, Humpy and Deshmukh had played out a draw in Game 1 after 41 moves with both players slugging it out and unable to break the deadlock. Both players had shared 0.5 point each earlier.