FIDE Women's GP chess: Humpy holds on to a draw; Zhu beats Divya

Pune: When the going is too good, you pinch yourself and then imagine hurdles along the way. IM Alina Kashlinskaya of Poland, 31, experienced that on Tuesday. And it did not end well. She was on the verge of beating overnight sole leader K Humpy in the eighth and penultimate round of the FIDE Women’s GP chess ’ fifth leg at Amanora The Fern, Hadapsar.

She had never beaten the veteran Indian GM in classical chess, and that was added motivation. On the 48th move of the Ruy Lopez Anderssen variation, Kashlinskaya moved her hand to move her rook in the ‘d’ file to the ‘d5’ square — the strongest move suggested by the engine.

That would have taken the evaluation to almost 4 in her favour. But then she said later that she felt there could be some fortress from the opposition and decided to play the seemingly forced line. In the process, she moved her other rook from b6 to b7. That devalued her a6 pawn and gave Humpy the escape route.

The top seed didn’t need a second invitation and liquidated the position to a dead draw in rook, knight and pawns endgame after gobbling up the Pole’s ‘a’ pawn. Humpy even set up a mating trap along the way. The draw helped Humpy deny Zhu Jiner the sole leadership.

Zhu had outplayed Divya Deshmukh earlier in the day. Both Humpy and Zhu are on six points with a round to go. Humpy plays Nurgyul Salimova of Bulgaria in the ninth and last round on Wednesday. Zhu will have black pieces against Polina Shuvalova of Russia.

Kashlinskaya, who has managed only 2.5 points so far, tried to look at the brighter side during the media interaction. “Maybe it’s better to have all wrongs in one event than scattered over many tournaments,” she said. Zhu defeated Divya with white pieces in a Four Knights game. She played an early Kh2 and slowly drove home the advantage after Divya played a questionable queen move.