Praggnanandhaa leads Indian charge at Las Vegas Freestyle chess; Gukesh opts out

Las Vegas (USA): R Praggnanandhaa found himself clubbed with Magnus Carlsen in the same group, while Arjun Erigaisi and Vidit Gujrathi were bunched together in the other pool of the 16-player Freestyle chess tournament to be held here.

World number one Magnus Carlsen will yet again start as the favourite for the title in this edition that saw a lot of pre-event activities including participation of NBA players. The tournament-proper starts late on Wednesday.

The event carries a total prize pool of USD 750,000 with 200,000 reserved for the winner. Each group has eight players in the line up and the top four will advance to the next stage while the bottom half will play against each other.

World champion D Gukesh is going to give the event a miss as he will be playing the main event of the Grandmaster tour in about a month's time.

The 19-year-old Praggnanandhaa will start his campaign against Nodirbek Abdusattorov of Uzbekistan, a player who was struggling at the previous edition of Grand Chess tour in Zagreb, Croatia.

Carlsen will play the winner of the first edition, Vincent Keymer of Germany, in his opening round.

American Hans Niemann will make his first appearance in the Freestyle chess tournament and take on Erigaisi in the opener.

Gujrathi will take on Fabiano Caruana of United States. For the first time, a woman player, Bibisara Assaubuyeva of Kazakhstan, has been included in the lineup to compete against the world elite.

Freestyle chess is a new name given to Fischer random chess or chess 960 where the position of the pieces is randomly changed at the start of the game.

With little theory in the books, the version is gaining popularity as tame draws out of the openings have vanished and there are usually a lot of fighting games right from the beginning.