Viswanathan Anand congratulates R Vaishali for winning bronze in Blitz Championship

Legendary India chess player Viswanathan Anand congratulated India’s R Vaishali for winning a bronze in the women’s section of the World Blitz Championship on Wednesday, January 1. Vaishali defeated China’s Zhu Jiner 2.5-1.5 in the quarter-finals before losing to another Chinese opponent Ju Wenjun 0.5-2.5 in the semi-final.

Following her performance, she received a special congratulatory message from the five-time world champion and International Chess Federation (FIDE) vice president, Viswanathan Anand, who praised her power-packed performance. He also extended his greetings to Koneru Humpy for his title-winning show in the rapid event.

“Congratulations to Vaishali for taking bronze. Her qualification was truly a power packed performance. Our Waca Chess mentee (WestBridge Anand Chess Academy) has done us proud. We are so happy to be supporting her and her chess. What a way to wrap up 2024. In 2021, we thought we would get stronger chess players but here we have it a World Champion (Humpy) and a Bronze medallist (Vaishali)!,” Anand wrote on his X account.

The event was completely dominated by the Chinese as Ju Wenjun went on to snare the world title defeating compatriot Lei Tingjie 3.5-2.5. In the ‘Open’ section, the Blitz title was shared between world number one Magnus Carlsen and Russia’s Ian Nepomniachtchi after three sudden-death games ended without a winner. This marked the first instance of the title being awarded to two players, following Carlsen’s suggestion to share the title due to the deadlock.

“We reached a point where it had been a long day. We played many games, we had three draws and I felt that I could keep playing. But it was a nice solution to share the win, it was a good way to end it,” said Carlsen.