First it was D Gukesh, who became the world chess champion, and now it is Koneru Humpy, who added to the list of chess laurels for India in 2024. Humpy clinched a historic second world title in rapid chess, winning the year-ended World Rapid Chess Championship by defeating Indonesia’s Irene Sukandar.

Humpy won her first World Rapid title in 2019 in Georgia, and is now the second player to bag multiple championships in this format. The other player is China’s Ju Wenjun.

The 37-year-old’s sensational victory sent chess fans into a state of meltdown, and she also received tributes from Gukesh and PM Narendra Modi on social media. Meanwhile, World No. 3 chess star Hikaru Nakamura, considered to be one of the best in the Rapid and Blitz format, hailed the Indian Grandmaster’s domination in the sport.

Koneru Humpy compared to chess legends

The American Grandmaster also went on to compare her to Judith Polgar and Hu Yifan. Speaking on Magnus Carlsen co-owned Take Take Take chess YouTube channel, he said, “Humpy is a player who’s been 2600 for many, many years, I think, for a long time. She was probably the clear number three behind Judith and Hu Yifan. So, it’s great to see her playing so well, assuming that’s good enough to win. I think it’s fantastic.”

“Of course, the Indians will be celebrating once again, like they have a lot recently.

“I think that it’s really great to see is when you look at chess, I think the Indian model right now is very clearly the best.”

In 2002, Humpy became the youngest woman to ever achieve the title of Grandmaster aged 15 years, one month and 27 days. The record has only been surpassed by Yifan. She is also India’s first female grandmaster, and is a gold medalist at the Olympiad, Asian Games and Asian C’ship. The veteran is also a World C’ship runner-up.

Nakamura, who hasn’t been at his best in New York, lauded the development of chess in India, and pointed out the huge amount of sponsorships involved. “You have all these players who have serious support behind them. I mean, you have Arjun, for example, who, I think, I mean, his sponsorship is public with Quantbox. I think he’s getting 300,000 Dollars a year sponsorship.”

“I mean, I know Pragg, I mean, Vidit, you know, Gukesh, all of them have very serious sponsorships.”

Explaining how the financial structure in chess for Indian grandmasters was different than players belonging to other countries, he hailed the local governments. “When you’re in that situation and whether it’s the Chess Federation or even the local governments that are taking care of you, it’s very easy to play chess for the love of the game and to focus on it versus a situation where, unfortunately, many, many players who make it into the Grand Chess Tour, they’re simply trying to earn a living,” he said.

Among Indian chess fans, Nakamura is known to have accused Arjun Erigaisi of cheating, without any evidence, via direct messages. In an interview with The Indian Express, Indian Grandmaster Srinath Narayanan revealed, “Hikaru used to accuse Arjun of cheating. This was two or three years back. He was pretty confrontative about it. Arjun felt sad about it, that someone he looked up to as a chess player was accusing him just because he was playing well.”