India's Koneru Humpy finishes third at Women's Chess Grand Prix

Humpy has won both the prestigeous Arjuna and Padmashree Awards before

After a poor show at the World rapid and blitz competition, Koneru Hampy secured a third position with seven points in the Women’s Grand Prix Chess tournament at Monte Carlo today.

The 12th Women’s Grand Prix concluded with current top seeded Grand Master Yifan Hou emerging as the champion whereas the only Indian Chess player of the tournament, Humpy finished with 6 wins and seven points.

The second ranked Indian Chess player managed to defeat Yifan Hou in the third round and looked like a strong contender to finish top of the standings. However, six wins were not enough to finish at the top of the points table.

She lost to the Muzychuk sisters in two consecutive rounds in the later stages, giving away her lead poorly.

Humpy and Mariya Muzychuk finished with seven points each at the end of 11 rounds, but the tie breaker round went in favor of the Ukrainian. The Indian settled for the third spot, behind the winner Yifan Hou and Mariya.

The Padmashree and Arjuna award winner, Koneru entered the tournament as the top seeded women chess player and was well on course to win the tournament.

The Indian Chess player holds the record of being the youngest woman ever to achieve the titlle of Grandmaster at the age of 15 years, 1 month, 27 days, beating Judit Polgár's previous mark by three months. This record was subsequently broken by Hou Yifan in 2008.

Humpy had a disappointing outing in the Commonwealth Chess Championship held earlier this year. She lost to International Master Himanshu Sharma from a winning position in the fourth round of the tournament.

The youngest Indian Grandmaster, after attaining a winning position, did not know the time control in-force and was declared lost on time after her time ran out.

However, he bounced back strongly winning the individual bronze at the Women's World Team Chess Championship held in China. Despite Dronvalli Harika’s silver and Humpy's bronze, India finished fourth in the competition - a point behind China, which bagged the bronze medal.

With a number of achievements throughout her career so far, she has been regarded as one of the finest chess players ever produced by the country.

Previously Koneru has won three gold medals at three consecutive World Youth Chess Championships, 1997 (Under-10 Girls division), 1998 (Under-12 Girls) and 2000 (Under-14 Girls).