Much like Fabiano Caruana in the Open section, the spearhead of top seed India 1, K. Humpy could get nothing more than a draw even as one-sided results continued to flow in the women’s section of the Chess Olympiad.
Saturday saw Humpy, the strongest woman player here, craftily stonewall her Argentine rival Marisa Zuriel’s designs by locking the centre of the board to earn a draw in 44 moves. In this positional battle, Humpy, rated over 400 points above Marisa, failed to get any advantage.
On the lower boards, it was a different story.
Making amends for her first-round marathon that lasted 103 moves, Tania Sachdev needed only 36 moves to taste a second victory in less than 24 hours. R. Vaishali took a longer route to win after Bhakti Kulkarni gave the desired finish to her game.
Padmini Rout, after resting in the first round, could only get a draw on the second board for India 2. On the rest of the boards, Vantika Agrawal, Soumya Swaminathan and Mary Ann Gomes emerged as comfortable winners.
For India 3, Eesha Karavade and P. V. Nandhidhaa won on the higher boards while the lower ones produced draws.
Third seed Georgia could only manage a 2.5-1.5 victory over Lithuania in the closest match involving a top-10 seed. Though Nana Dzagnidze and Salome Melia won as expected, Meri Arabidze’s loss to Gabija Simkunaite - rated 416 points lower - on the fourth board was a stunner.
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