13-year-old Divya Deshmukh with an Elo of 2432 becomes India no.3 behind Humpy and Harika
The April rating list just came out today and the biggest news of the day is 13-year-old Divya Deshmukh from Nagpur becoming India no.3 with an Elo of 2432. She has left behind stalwarts of Indian women's chess like Soumya Swaminathan (2402), Tania Sachdev (2397), Eesha Karavade (2370), Padmini Rout (2364), R.Vaishali (2353), Bhakti Kulkarni (2350), Vijayalakshmi Subbaraman (2342) and others. The only two players ahead of her are Humpy and Harika. For quite some time India has been searching for a female player who can give the best in the world a run for their money. With Divya's recent performance we can be sure that we have a future World Champion in her. In this article we tell you how Divya reached a rating of 2432 and also show you a couple of games annotated by the youngster herself.
Divya Deshmukh started the year 2019 with an Elo of 2169 and the WIM title. She didn't have a great event at the IIFLW Mumbai 2018-19 and her rating came down to 2127. But that's when things changed completely. First she took part in the Velammal - AICF Women International Round Robin tournament from the 28th of January to 4th of February 2019. In a field that had six experienced women players from all over the world, Divya who was the third last seed, won the tournament and scored her maiden IM norm!
Final Ranking after 11 Rounds
| Rk. | SNo | Name | sex | FED | Rtg | Pts. | TB1 | TB2 | TB3 | TB4 | |
| 1 | 7 | WIM | Divya Deshmukh | w | IND | 2168 | 8,0 | 0,0 | 38,25 | 7 | 3 |
| 2 | 12 | IM | Osmak Iulija | w | UKR | 2394 | 7,5 | 1,0 | 38,00 | 6 | 3 |
| 3 | 6 | WIM | Michelle Catherina P | w | IND | 2175 | 7,5 | 0,0 | 35,25 | 6 | 4 |
| 4 | 9 | IM | Munguntuul Batkhuyag | w | MGL | 2428 | 7,0 | 0,0 | 34,25 | 5 | 1 |
| 5 | 4 | WIM | Aakanksha Hagawane | w | IND | 2259 | 6,5 | 0,0 | 36,50 | 3 | 1 |
| 6 | 3 | WGM | Babiy Olga | w | UKR | 2275 | 6,0 | 0,0 | 25,00 | 5 | 2 |
| 7 | 2 | WGM | Uuriintuya Uurtsaikh | w | MGL | 2314 | 5,5 | 0,0 | 27,25 | 4 | 1 |
| 8 | 1 | IM | Nakhbayeva Guliskhan | w | KAZ | 2336 | 5,0 | 0,0 | 25,75 | 3 | 1 |
| 9 | 8 | WIM | Sapale Saloni | w | IND | 2198 | 4,5 | 0,0 | 19,75 | 2 | 2 |
| 10 | 11 | WIM | Franco Valencia Angela | w | COL | 2107 | 3,5 | 0,0 | 19,25 | 2 | 2 |
| 11 | 10 | WIM | Varshini V | w | IND | 2171 | 3,0 | 0,0 | 14,00 | 1 | 0 |
| 12 | 5 | WIM | Chandreyee Hajra | w | IND | 1925 | 2,0 | 0,0 | 8,25 | 1 | 1 |
Next up was the Aeroflot Open 2019 from 19th Feb to 1st of March 2019. Divya was one of the many Indian players participating in the event. She played in the B-category (2300-2550) and missed her second IM norm by a whisker. She went back home with a WGM norm - her second norm.
Divya's two games from Aeroflot Open 2019
After the Aeroflot Open 2019 ended we contacted Divya and she sent us two of her wins against Maria Guseva and Vladimir Zakhartsov.
Divya Deshmukh vs Vladimir Zakhartsov
In both these games there are few things that you can know about Divya's playing style. She likes messy positions that are tactical in nature. It doesn't matter if she has an opening advantage or not, she loves to attack and find resources on the board. From her annotations you can find that she is quite critical about her play. She tries to find mistakes in her games and is not conservative in giving question marks. This self-critical approach is sure to help her keep improving in the years to come.
Previous coverage of Divya on ChessBase India
Playlist on ChessBase India YouTube Channel dedicated to Divya Deshmukh
The golden girl of Indian chess
World Youth 2018: Divya wins bronze
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