Love playing in front of Indian fans: Assaubayeva

Bibisara Assaubayeva caused a sensation at the World rapid and blitz chess championship in Warsaw in 2021. She won the blitz event and was the runner-up in rapid. And she was just 17 then and became the youngest women’s World blitz champion in history and went on to retain her crown the following year.

When she was the runner-up at the World rapid championship in Alexandra Kosteniuk was the winner. It was after watching the Russian getting awarded the trophy by the then FIDE president in 2008 that a four-year-old Assaubayeva wanted to be a World champion.

Ranked 11th in the world at the moment, she is one of the most exciting young talents in women’s chess. In May this year, she became a Grandmaster – only the 43rd woman to get that title, and first since R. Vaishali got hers in 2023.

“After finally getting that GM title, I felt really good, as finally I had no pressure,” Assaubayeva told The Hindu. “I scored my first GM norm when I was 17, then next when I was 19, but the final one teased me, as I missed after coming close. Finally, I got the norm from Sharjah Masters, when I needed a draw in the final round.”

After all that stress, she is glad that she is back playing at the Global Chess League, in which this is her second season. Like last year in London, she is playing for American Gambits.

“We have a good team, maybe stronger than last year,” she said. “And we just enjoy our chess and playing in this league. And I feel all my teammates are nice people. And I find our Icon player Hikaru Nakamura is not just one of the world’s best players, but is very nice to talk to, as well.”

Assaubayeva is glad that she is playing the GCL in India. “Here we have a lot of fans, a lot of people who like chess, and it is amazing,” she said. “I have played in India before, at the World junior championship in Delhi in 2019 and then the Olympiad in Chennai in 2022.”

(The writer is in Mumbai at the invitation of Tech Mahindra).