Indians look to stamp authority

The first round of the 206-player FIDE World Cup to be played in Goa will start with 156 players in fray on Saturday. The firm favourites or the fancied chess players or simply put, the top 50 seeded players, will begin their campaign from the second round to be played from November 4.

This prestigious long and gruelling event will stretch across eight rounds, spanning four weeks and will test a player’s perseverance and physical stamina.

Spearheading India’s campaign is their reigning World Champion Dommaraju Gukesh and all the other ‘Golden boys’ of Indian chess who brought home the Olympiad Team Gold last year -- Arjun Erigaisi, R Praggnanandhaa, Vidit Gujrathi and Pentala Harikrishna. If it can be recalled, Pragg had reached the finals of the last edition of the World Cup where he had lost to Magnus Carlsen.

It was way back in 2002 that India hosted the World cup for the first time, albeit in a different format in Hyderabad where Viswanathan Anand, the five-time World Champion, successfully defended his World Cup title, won a couple of years before in China with an emphatic show. Incidentally, all the three top contenders for this event -- Gukesh, Arjun and Pragg -- weren’t even born then! This is a testimony to India’s emergence as a powerhouse of chess talent in the last few years. India then boasted Grandmasters in single digits and now boasts 90 of them.

Aravindh Chithambaram, Nihal Sarin, Karthikeyan Murali are other top Indian players capable of defying the odds.

Divya Deshmukh is the only female face in the event after receiving a wild card entry, courtesy her triumph in the Women’s World Cup. The 19-year-old will feature in the first round against Greek GM Stamatis Kourkoulos Arditis and a victory here will have her pitted against compatriot Sarin in the second round.

A prize purse of $2000000 and three qualifying spots for the next year’s Candidates (eight-player double round-robin event where the winner will then challenge the world champion Gukesh for the World title). This event will follow a single-elimination knock-out format in which each round will have two classical games followed by a tiebreaker if required. The tie-breaker will consist of two rapid games while the single-bidding Armageddon will be employed if no result is achieved at the end of the rapid rounds.

The strength of the event has been diluted without the presence of reigning champion Magnus Carlsen, the highest ever rated player on the planet along with Hikaru Nakamura and Fabiano Caruana of the USA, the top three players in the World.

Every player losing in the first round will earn $3500 while the winner will take home a prize purse of $120,000.

GM Anish Giri fresh from his triumph in the Grand Swiss is another top contender for the title but he and GM Matthias Bluebaum of Germany have already qualified for the Candidates event through the FIDE Swiss Tour and if any of them or Gukesh finish in the top-three, the Candidates spot will be awarded to the next player in the standings.

Amongst the 30 teenagers, the cynosure of all eyes will be wild-card entrant, 12-year-old International Mater (IM) Oro Faustino of Argentina, who already has one GM norm in his kitty. The 65-year-old GM Igor Efimov, playing for Monaco, will be the oldest participant at 65 years.

Indians at the World Cup: D Gukesh, Praggnanandhaa R, Arjun Erigaisi, Vidit Gujrathi, Aravindh Chithambaram, Nihal Sarin, Harikrishna Pentala, Raunak Sadhwani, Leon Luke Mendonca, Iniyan Pa, Pranav V, Raja Rithvik R, Narayanan SL, Pranesh M, Harshavardhan GB, Karthikeyan Murali, Idani Pouya, Karthik Venkataraman, Surya Shekhar Ganguly, Neelash Saha, Diptayan Ghosh, Aromyak Ghosh, Himal Gusain, Lalit Babu MR. 

World Champion D Gukesh and R Praggnanandhaa lead the young Indian brigade at the FIDE Chess World Cup beginning in Goa on Saturday. 

WC Schedule Nov 1-16: (Round 1 to Round 5) Nov 17-19: Quarterfinals   Nov 21-23: Semifinals Nov 24-26: Finals (all rounds start at 3 pm IST)

Trophy named after Anand The new trophy of the FIDE World Chess Cup held in Goa was christened as the Viswanathan Anand trophy in honour of the five-time world champion.