Humpy qualifies for Candidates
In her long career Koneru Humpy has notched up several remarkable achievements. But, what she did on Wednesday night merits special attention. Or, rather, what she achieved without doing anything, to be precise.
She qualified for the Candidates tournament — the winner of which will earn the right to challenge the World chess champion — after she finished second in the FIDE Women’s Grand Prix overall standings.
Special
What makes the feat special is that she did it without playing one of the three legs she had chosen from the series of four. Humpy chose to skip the Gibraltar leg, which concluded on Wednesday, because of travel concerns in the time of the COVID-19 pandemic.
When she played in the first two legs — at Skolkovo (Russia) and Monaco — the coronavirus hadn’t yet raised its ugly head. She won the first leg and was runner-up in the second.
She had 293 points from those two legs. A top-three finish in the third could have fetched her the Grand Prix title, but she had, of course, chosen not to play.
She, however, finished runner-up in the GP series to Russia’s Alexandra Goryachkina (398 points); she had chosen Lausanne as the third leg, which was played in March last year, shortly before the world went into lockdown.
