‘Simply relaxed’: Vantika Agrawal scripts beautiful win over former world champion to achieve Chess World Cup Spherical 3

Indian Worldwide Grasp Vantika Agrawal stormed into the third spherical of the FIDE Ladies’s World Cup 2025 in Batumi (Georgia) on Friday after beating former world champion Anna Ushenina of Ukraine in an exciting tie-breaker. Vantika, who hails from Noida, defeated 14th Ladies’s World Champion Ushenina 4.5-3.5 after a number of rounds of tiebreaks.

In Spherical 2, Vantika and Ushenina gained one Classical contest every, forcing the match into the tie-breakers. Within the Fast and Blitz tie-breakers, Vantika gained the primary 10’+10″ Fast match earlier than shedding the second. She ultimately secured the victory within the Blitz tie-breaker as she gained the primary 5’+3″ Blitz recreation and drew the subsequent one to clinch the Spherical 2 match.

“Simply relaxed,” a brilliant excited Vantika instructed FIDE after reaching the subsequent spherical. “Within the Classical part, I gained the primary match. Within the second recreation, I used to be significantly better, however someway, within the time crunch, I ended up shedding. Once more, within the 10 + 10 I bought the lead with the black and drawing with white mustn’t have been a tough process, however yeah, then scores bought levelled and I gained within the blitz part.”

Vantika explains comeback win in Ladies’s World Cup

Explaining how she scripted a win after squandering the lead within the Classical part, Vantika stated: “Within the earlier video games, the error I made was that I used to be considering a draw was sufficient, however right here I used to be considering I simply needed to play nicely. I used to be not desirous about the consequence. I believe that sort of helped me so much.”

By reaching Spherical 3 of the FIDE Ladies’s World Cup 2025, Vantika has already secured a prize cash of $6,750. She is going to now face the previous World Fast and three-time World Blitz Ladies’s champion GM Kateryna Lagno of Russia in Spherical 3 of the World Cup.

In the meantime, Worldwide Grasp Padmini Rout misplaced to Alexandra Kosteniuk of Switzerland, additionally a former world champion, in Spherical 2 and exited the event. Ladies’s Worldwide Grasp Priyanka Okay was additionally dumped out of the World Cup after shedding each Fast tie-break video games in opposition to Klaudia Kulon of Poland.

India’s Koneru Humpy, Harika Dronavalli, R Vaishali and Divya Deshmukh have already superior to the third spherical of the FIDE Ladies’s Chess World Cup 2025.

Koneru Humpy will tackle Klaudia Kulon of Poland within the third spherical, whereas D Harika faces Stavroula Tsolakidou of Greece.

R Vaishali might be up in opposition to Carrisa Yip of the US and Divya Deshmukh Teodora takes on Injac of Serbia.