India At Chess Olympiad, Round 7: Indian Women Continue Dominant Run With Seven Wins On Trot

Grandmaster Rameshbabu Vaishali and Vantika Agrawal put on a brilliant showing to beat Lela Javakhishvili and Bella Khotenashvili at the 45th Chess Olympiad on Wednesday, September 18. (More Sports News)

The victory also meant that the Indian women’s team continued to ride the momentum wave to register yet another thumping 3-1 win to extend their unbeaten run at the event. 

Indian women’s side have now won all their seven rounds. 

On a day that saw D Harika settling for a draw with Nana Dzagnidze, Divya Deshmukh held by Nino Batsiashvili from a better position, it was Vantika, who handled her time pressure extremely well to play almost 20 moves with just about a minute on her clock to win her game. 

It was finally left to Vaishali to record a fine technical win to hand the women's team its seventh straight win.

The 45th Chess Olympiad's format is played in a Swiss system. 

According to the rules, each round sees four players from each team take on four from the other, with a spot for the reserved player who can be used as a substitute in between the rounds. 

The four games are played at the same time on four boards in replaced colours, with one game point allotted for a win and half game point for a draw.

Scores from each game are added to determine which team takes the round. If a team wins the round, they are awarded two points, regardless of the game point margin, while a draw earns only a match point.

The Indian women took their tally to an impressive 14 points out of a possible 14 and stayed ahead of nearest rival Poland that was about to register a victory over Ukraine.

(With PTI Inputs)