India’s Divya Deshmukh is the new world junior girls chess champion. The two-time reigning national women’s chess champion is now the U-20 queen of the world. In her second appearance at the Worlds, which concluded at Gandhinagar, Gujarat, Nagpur’s Deshmukh remained unbeaten to win her maiden U-20 crown collecting 10 points.
Exactly 21 days after winning the classical open Sharjah Challengers title, where the 18-year-old participated to gain some match practice, Divya played with confidence and proved her mettle in the U-20 championship. This triumph, without losing a single game, takes Divya’s tally of international gold medals to 21 while representing India in 38 age category tournaments. Despite becoming the Asian Women’s Chess champion last year, the U-20 world crown was missing in Divya’s kitty.
After winning the sixth round of the world juniors against Ayan Allahverdiyeva, Divya took the lead and maintained the advantage to lift the title. In a tense 11th and final round, Divya played for over five hours to pull off a thrilling win over Bulgaria’s third seed Krasteva Beloslava in a marathon battle of 57 moves. On the podium, Divya was followed by Armenia’s second seed Mariam Mkrtchyan at 9.5 points and Ayan of Azerbaijan (8.5).
