RR Vaishali ended 2024 in style, claiming a bronze medal at the World Blitz Championship after reaching the semi-finals at the year-end event on Wall Street in New York.
Ju Wenjun won the women’s blitz title defeating Lei Tingjie in the final. Vaishali had lost to Wenjun in the semis and finished behind the two Chinese women. In the men’s division, Magnus Carlsen and Ian Nepomniachtchi agreed to share the title after both players won two games in the final and three games in the break.
After the Swiss stage of the World Blitz Championship (where eight quarter-finalists were selected), Vaishali had told the official YouTube handle of FIDE that she did not think she was a good blitz player. This despite the fact that he was a full point ahead of the pack at the time.
The Indian player even explained that he did not expect to enter the 8-man draw in New York. He also revealed that he spent the last few days on his first visit to the United States recovering from a cold.
“In fact, this was completely unexpected, the way the games went today (on the first day of the World Blitz Championship). I don’t think I’m a good blitz player, honestly! There are many strong players playing here. Today I was lucky in many games and in the end, it was successful,” he told FIDE. “I’d rather play in classic tournaments any day than fast and blitz. But fast and blitz are fun to play. You go through a lot of emotions every day and you have to recover because you play a lot of games every day.”
One of those matches was against Valentina Gunina of Russia where Vaishali made 23 moves with seven seconds or less on the clock. He went on to win that game even though he drew in one division.
In such situations you cannot think. He keeps making moves. That Gunina game was not a good time management for me. He was ahead on the clock and on the board with one full pawn up. He gave me a draw and he wanted to play in it,” added Vaishali.
Praise from legend
Five-time world champion Viswanathan Anand, who participated in Vaishali’s rise through the Westbridge Anand Chess Academy (WACA), posted on X: “Congratulations Vaishali for taking the bronze. His degree was truly a work in progress. Our WACA assistant did us proud. We are very happy to support him and his chess. What a way to end 2024! In 2021, we thought we would get strong chess players but here we have a world champion (Gukesh) and a bronze medalist!”
Vaishali’s bronze capped off a great year for Indian chess – and Indian women in chess – which began with Vaishali and Koneru Humpy playing in the eight-woman Candidates tournament in Toronto. Earlier in the World Rapid and Blitz Championship in New York, veteran Koneru Humpy won the World Rapid Championship. Now in the fastest format on offer, Vaishali has added copper.
While most of the headlines of the year were made by International Masters Divya Deshmukh and Vantika Agrawal, Vaishali had a quiet year by her standards.
After becoming the third Indian woman to claim the Grandmaster title last year, Vaishali was part of the Indian team that won the gold medal at the Chess Olympiad. But even then, it was Divya and Vantika who grabbed the headlines with individual gold medals.
Now the bronze medal gives the 23-year-old an excellent board for 2025.
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