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Journalism of Courage
The PSPB sports awards,on Monday,were held after a three-year gap. The function therefore saw some players awarded for feats achieved years ago. Chess Grandmaster Koneru Humpy,as a result,won the Elite Sportsperson award for achievements in 2009-10,when she qualified as challenger for the Women’s World Championship. But observers could well have considered the award perfectly timed for Humpy’s achievement just a week ago,when she won the Women’s Grand Prix in Dijilan,Armenia.
The event was the second of six Grand Prix spread over 2013 and 2014 to determine the challenger for the 2014 Women’s World Championship. Eighteen players are selected to compete in a maximum four Grand Prix. Humpy is currently in fifth place with the 160 points she gained from the win in Armenia,but unlike the four players above her who have two games in hand,she has three.
For Humpy,the elusive visa turned out to work perfectly. She avoided facing her nemesis,China’s Hou Yifan,who recently pipped Humpy to become the second-highest ranked women’s chess player (although Humpy,with a FIDE rating of 2607,subsequently regained her position behind Judith Polgar). “I am not so disappointed about missing the tournament because I hadn’t really prepared very well for it. I was just rushing there after Thailand. So in a way it didn’t work out too badly for me. I got extra time to prepare for the tournament in Dilijan,” she says.
The tournament in Dilijan itself was as close to perfect as possible. Humpy had five wins in 12 rounds and won the tournament a full point ahead of the fourth-ranked women’s player Anna Muzychuk. She suffered no losses and had draws against defending World Champion Anna Ushnina.
“The draw with Anna Ushnina was good but more importantly I got a couple of really dominating wins over Anna Muzychuk and (former world champion) Antoaneta Stefanova,and that has really boosted my confidence,” Humpy says.
Humpy has now got her sights set on the third GP in Tashkent in September. After a few days of rest,in which she plans to go shopping and watch movies,it will back to training – analysing her past games and working in particular on improving her endgame. Although her father chips in when he can,much as when Humpy was a child prodigy,she will for the most part be training alone. Humpy had once remarked on the need for a second to prepare for games,as is the case with Viswanathan Anand.
No training partner
“In India it is hard to find a women’s partner because most of the good players are my competitors. Of course I tried looking for a playing partner among the men,but even there it is difficult because most players can’t be exclusive. To get an exclusive partner is expensive and you cant use a part-timer because of the risk that your gameplay will be shared with some of your competitors,” she says.
Making things more difficult for her is the fact that she doesn’t get as much match practice as she wants. “I haven’t played any tournament in India for the last three or four years. That’s because most of the tournaments we have are open tournaments. That simply has top players playing a lot of games with the youngsters. That’s good for the new players because that is a good way to get your ratings up and work towards getting your International Master or Grandmaster norm,but for me it doesn’t have any advantage.
It’s been happening for many years now and if I need to get my rating higher,I need to consistently play top players. It would at least be an improvement if you had a super category in these tournaments but you don’t,” she says.
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