The Divya-Koneru final: A battle of generations at FIDE Women’s World Cup

In 2023, Harika Dronavalli had made the quarterfinals of the FIDE Women’s World Cup. That is the farthest that any Indian woman has progressed at the prestigious event.

And now, with Divya Deshmukh and Koneru Humpy making the 2025 final at Batumi, Georgia, the occasion is undoubtedly a historic moment for Indian chess. Not only will the title reside in India, but both Divya and Koneru will now play the 2026 candidates by virtue of having made the FIDE Women’s World Cup finals.

These perks notwithstanding, the teenage prodigy from Nagpur is on the cusp of a $50,000 prize money, a Grandmaster title, and a World Cup gold medal to add to her FIDE World U20 title she won last year.

That India has just three women in the form of Koneru, Harika, and Vaishali with GM titles would make the neutral shift their allegiance slightly towards Divya. Such has been her rise.

A teen on the rampage

At just 19-years of age, Divya is currently the highest-ranked woman under the age of 20 in the world. And the form that she has displayed by taking down higher-ranked players in the tournament has truly been remarkable.

Her face-off against Koneru Humpy, however, is truly a battle of generations. Consider this: in 2002, when a then 15-year-old Koneru had become the world’s youngest and India’s first woman GM, Divya was not even born.

Such is the level-playing field offered by sport that made fixtures such as this memorable, if not astounding and fascinating.

Also, both players exhibit contrasting styles of play on the board. Having grown up on the classical format, Koneru is rock solid on positional plays and relies heavily on her strategic supremacy.

On the contrary, Divya relies on aggression and versatility. In recent times, she has also displayed tactical brilliance, a mark of her maturity as a player.

The 38-year-old Koneru, meanwhile, wears her opponent down by gradually improving her positions over the duration of the game. Divya, on the other hand, with her tactical acumen, works for near-term advantages over her opponent and eventually closes the door.

Styles of play aside, the ratings reveal a gap between the two.

Divya has a live Elo rating of 2,476.2 while Koneru is at 2,537.4. The latter is a two-time World Rapid Champion, while the teenager won the Asian Women’s Championship in 2023 and the 2024 FIDE World U20 Championship.

Tale of the tape

The FIDE Women’s World Cup is not the first time that the two find themselves on either side of the board. The two have incidentally played each other a total of 9 times, and Koneru holds a 5-2 advantage.

Four of those wins for Koneru, however, have come in the Blitz format with a solitary victory in the classical format.

Divya, on the other hand, has tasted success over Koneru once each in the Rapid and Blitz formats.

The final, however, will be played in the Classical format, with two games being played on a time control of 90 minutes for the first 40 moves, after which 30 minutes are added with a 30-second increment.

Should a deadlock ensue, two rapid games will be played out as tie-breakers. These will be played across 15-minutes with 10-second increments.

Should a winner still not emerge, two more rapid games will be employed, but with shorter time controls of 10 minutes, with 10-second increments. If a winner still fails to emerge, Blitz games are played out till a decisive verdict is reached.

The winner takes home USD 50,000 while the runner-up settles for USD 35,000. That said, the prize money will be the last thing on the minds of Koneru Humpy and Divya Deshmukh.

While the former has cemented her place as an icon of the women’s game in the country, the latter is fast emerging as the nation's latest sporting heartthrob.

The result aside, that two Indian women battled out in the 2025 FIDE Women’s World Cup final will for long be remembered as a seminal moment in India’s glorious chess history.