Indian Chess Star Vantika Agrawal Dethrones Former World Champion at World Cup, Secures Lucrative Prize

Vantika Agrawal, a 23-year-old Indian International Master (IM), has made a stunning advancement to the third round of the FIDE Women's World Cup 2025 in Batumi, Georgia. She achieved this feat by defeating former world champion Anna Ushenina of Ukraine in a captivating tie-breaker match, concluding with a score of 4.5-3.5 on Friday.

The intense second-round encounter between Agrawal and Ushenina necessitated tie-breakers after each player secured a win in the Classical games. While Vantika clinched the first Rapid tie-breaker but conceded the second, she ultimately sealed her triumph in the Blitz segment by winning the first game and drawing the subsequent one.

"Just relaxed," Vantika shared with FIDE following her advancement. "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."

Elaborating on her winning strategy, Vantika explained, "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."

For her performance in reaching Round 3, the Indian player has already secured prize money of $6,750 (approximately Rs 5.8 lakh). Her next challenge will be against former World Rapid and three-time World Blitz Women's champion GM Kateryna Lagno of Russia.

In other news from the tournament, International Master Padmini Rout was unfortunately eliminated after her defeat to former world champion Alexandra Kosteniuk of Switzerland in Round 2. Women's International Master Priyanka K also exited the competition after losing both Rapid tie-break games against Poland's Klaudia Kulon.

However, four other Indian players have successfully progressed to the third round. Their upcoming matches include:

• Koneru Humpy vs. Klaudia Kulon (Poland)
• D Harika vs. Stavroula Tsolakidou (Greece)
• R Vaishali vs. Carrisa Yip (United States)
• Divya Deshmukh vs. Teodora Injac (Serbia)