Koneru Humpy and Divya Deshmukh played out a draw in 41 moves in game 1 of the FIDE Women's World Cup final in Batumi, Georgia on Saturday evening.
Divya, with the white pieces, came out of the opening with a clear advantage, as Humpy later admitted that she had misplayed the lines of the Queen's Gambit Accepted opening. At one point, Divya's position was strongly favoured by the evaluation engines after move 11.
However, she couldn't quite take home that advantage, and the position was once again reduced to evenness by move 14.
Divya took her time with some moves, and was under severe time pressure with less than five minutes left on her clock by move 25. That made it all the more surprising that she refused to take a draw by three-fold repetition on move 29.
On move 34, it looked like there might have been a positive ending to that brave decision from Divya, as Humpy made an inaccuracy by pushing her pawn to d5. However, Divya couldn't quite find the correct follow-up to it. Eventually, the draw came not too long after that. On move 41, the players had repeated another position three times, and this time Humpy claimed the draw. It is a good result for the veteran, who now goes into tomorrow's game 2 with the white pieces. She has played brilliantly with the white pieces throughout this tournament, and is unbeaten, so she took what looks like the pragmatic option.
The final continues on Sunday, July 27 (starting at 4:45 PM IST). Should there not be a winner by tomorrow evening, the fate of the World Cup will come down to tie-breaks on Monday.
You can relive all the action from game 1 of the final on our live blog, below: