India's Koneru Humpy in action against Russia's Aleksandra Goryachkina at World Rapid Championship. (PHOTO: FIDELennart Ootes)
After a relatively slow start at the ongoing World Rapid and Blitz Championship 2025 in Doha on Friday, reigning Women’s World Rapid Champion, India’s Koneru Humpy, put a strong foot forward on Saturday to finish Day 2 as the co-leader of the Rapid event.
Having been placed 37th after the third round and 30th after the fourth, Humpy was at her best in her strongest format on Day 2. She carried the winning momentum from the fourth round, where she defeated Ukrainian Nataliya Buksa, and notched up three back-to-back wins on Saturday for a total of four consecutive wins.
In her first round of the second day, Humpy was pitted against Mongolia’s Bat-Erdene Mungunzul with the white pieces. What had seemed an equal game for the majority of the time swindled in favour of the Indian when Mungunzul blundered in the endgame. The result gave Humpy her fourth point and third win after the first five rounds and moved her up to 13th place.
Humpy then defeated Russia’s Yana Zhapova with the black pieces in just 37 moves in the sixth round. Her fifth point of the event pushed her to seventh place before she broke into the sole lead with her 31-move win over Sara Khadem. She faced Aleksandra Goryachkina in the last round of the day. In a topsy-turvy game, Humpy had to share the spoils, which allowed China’s Zhu Jiner to catch up with the defending champion as a joint leader with 6.5 points from eight rounds.
In the Open section, Russia’s Vladislav Artemiev turned out to be the giantslayer. One of the five co-leaders after Day 1, Artemiev took down the mighty Magnus Carlsen and Arjun Erigaisi for two big wins on Day 2. First, he took on Arjun in the sixth round and went down on the clock but swindled his way back for a win, and topped it up with the biggest result of the day: beating Carlsen.
Artemiev’s speed run was slowed by Maxime Vachier-Lagrave and Alexey Sarana, who both forced Artemiev to share points, which allowed USA’s Hans Niemann to also jump to 7.5 points and finish the day as the co-leaders.
Among Indians in the Open section, World Classical Champion D. Gukesh impressed initially. With wins over Sina Movahed and David Anton, Gukesh was fighting for the top spot at some point in the day, but his last-round loss to arch-rival Nodirbek Abdusattorov pushed him down to 11th place with 6.5 points. Arjun, after losing to Artemiev, defeated compatriot SL Narayanan and finished with equal points as Gukesh, as the duo are the highest-ranked Indians after Day 2.
Both the Open and the Women’s sections will have four more rounds on Day 3 on Sunday.