Abhijeet Gupta
Grandmaster and former World junior champion Abhijeet Gupta starts as the top seed and hot favorite in the premier event of Delhi International Chess Festival that gets underway from Saturday.
A record breaking over 700 participants have registered for the biggest ever prize money tournament of the country, that started 12 years back.
The premier event has just over 100 participants which makes it one of the strongest tournaments with participation of over 50 titled players. “This has been done to make the tournament norm-friendly for Indian participants”, said Mr. B S Chauhan, Organising secretary and also secretary All India Chess Federation.
The premier event will see some of the best players from India participating for a total prize purse of Rs. 1. 25 Million. After Abhijeet Gupta, the presence of Abhijeet Kunte, B Adhiban, P Magesh Chandran and Commonwealth champion M R Lalith Babu will be seen in action spread over ten rounds.
The local challenge will be spearheaded by Grandmasters Sahaj Grover and Vaibhav Suri apart from Tania Sachdev who had a very successful stint recently in a match where she played against great masters of the past.
The ‘B’ section, for players rated below 2200 rating, will also start simultaneously and it has a prize pool of Rs. 3 Lacs while the section ‘C’, reserved for players rated below 1900 ELO rating and a prize fund of Rs. 600000/-, will start on the 9th of January.
The premier section will see Grandmaster Aleksej Aleksandrov of Belarus in action as the second seed and Andrey Deviatkin of Russia, Czebe Attila of Hungary, Raset Ziatdinov of United States, Henrik Teske of Germany, Marat Dzhumaev and Dmitry Kayumov of Uzbekistan will make the tournament extremely competitive.
“I believe that the time has come to divulge towards International Festivals of this kind, we have players from over 12 countries and many foreign participants in the very strong premier section while there will over 600 participants in the other two sections. This not only gives a chance to players to compete with the best but will also help to nurture those in formative stage to learn from the masters by watching them live in action”, Mr. Chauhan noted in a pre-tournament chat.
Official website: http://www.delhichess.com/
Participants
| 1 | GM | Gupta Abhijeet | 2637 | IND | |
| 2 | GM | Aleksandrov Aleksej | 2607 | BLR | |
| 3 | GM | Panchanathan Magesh Chandran | 2580 | IND | |
| 4 | GM | Deviatkin Andrei | 2569 | RUS | |
| 5 | GM | Adhiban B. | 2558 | IND | |
| 6 | GM | Dzhumaev Marat | 2554 | UZB | |
| 7 | GM | Lalith Babu M.R. | 2541 | IND | |
| 8 | GM | Lu Shanglei | 2526 | CHN | |
| 9 | GM | Teske Henrik | 2512 | GER | |
| 10 | GM | Kunte Abhijit | 2510 | IND | |
| 11 | GM | Vaibhav Suri | 2503 | IND | |
| 12 | IM | Shyam Sundar M. | 2501 | IND | |
| 13 | Wan Yunguo | 2497 | CHN | ||
| 14 | IM | Vishnu Prasanna. V | 2488 | IND | |
| 15 | GM | Czebe Attila | 2481 | HUN | |
| 16 | IM | Swapnil S. Dhopade | 2474 | IND | |
| 17 | GM | Murshed Niaz | 2473 | BAN | |
| 18 | GM | Grover Sahaj | 2472 | IND | |
| 19 | IM | Akshayraj Kore | 2463 | IND | |
| 20 | IM | Ashwin Jayaram | 2460 | IND | |
| 21 | GM | Fominyh Alexander | 2454 | RUS | |
| 22 | IM | Stany G.A. | 2454 | IND | |
| 23 | GM | Simantsev Mikhail | 2449 | UKR | |
| 24 | GM | Laxman R.R. | 2443 | IND | |
| 25 | FM | Ghosh Diptayan | 2442 | IND | |
| 26 | IM | Narayanan Srinath | 2434 | IND | |
| 27 | IM | Rathnakaran K. | 2434 | IND | |
| 28 | IM | Kuderinov Kirill | 2433 | KAZ | |
| 29 | IM | Swayams Mishra | 2431 | IND | |
| 30 | IM | Karthikeyan P. | 2424 | IND | |
| 31 | GM | Kayumov Dmitry D | 2415 | UZB | |
| 32 | IM | Vakhidov Jahongir | 2415 | UZB | |
| 33 | IM | Saptarshi Roy | 2411 | IND | |
| 34 | IM | Shyam Nikil P. | 2409 | IND | |
| 35 | IM | Ankit R. Rajpara | 2407 | IND | |
| 36 | IM | Himanshu Sharma | 2406 | IND | |
| 37 | IM | Tania Sachdev | F | 2403 | IND |
| 38 | IM | Udeshi Aditya | 2403 | IND | |
| 39 | FM | Gagare Shardul | 2403 | IND | |
| 40 | Navin Kanna T.U. | 2402 | IND | ||
| 41 | FM | Anurag Mhamal | 2399 | IND | |
| 42 | Narayanan.S.L | 2397 | IND | ||
| 43 | WGM | Gomes Mary Ann | F | 2394 | IND |
| 44 | IM | Sharma Dinesh K. | 2392 | IND | |
| 45 | IM | Saravanan V. | 2389 | IND | |
| 46 | IM | Sangma Rahul | 2365 | IND | |
| 47 | GM | Ziatdinov Raset | 2354 | USA | |
| 48 | IM | Kulkarni Vikramaditya | 2350 | IND | |
| 49 | FM | Aravindh Chithambaram Vr. | 2342 | IND | |
| 50 | Karthikeyan Murali | 2341 | IND | ||
| 51 | IM | Ramnath Bhuvanesh.R | 2339 | IND | |
| 52 | IM | Suvrajit Saha | 2336 | IND | |
| 53 | IM | Mohota Nisha | F | 2335 | IND |
| 54 | Phoobalan P. | 2328 | IND | ||
| 55 | IM | Murali Krishnan B.T. | 2320 | IND | |
| 56 | Gusain Himal | 2320 | IND | ||
| 57 | WGM | Soumya Swaminathan | F | 2315 | IND |
| 58 | FM | Das Sayantan | 2312 | IND | |
| 59 | Kulkarni Rakesh | 2306 | IND | ||
| 60 | IM | Praveen Kumar C. | 2305 | IND | |
| 61 | Chandra Akshat | 2300 | USA | ||
| 62 | WGM | Padmini Rout | F | 2288 | IND |
| 63 | Sahoo Utkal Ranjan | 2276 | IND | ||
| 64 | CM | Prince Bajaj | 2270 | IND | |
| 65 | Joshi G B | 2266 | IND | ||
| 66 | Abhishek Kelkar | 2265 | IND | ||
| 67 | Shreyans K. Shah | 2265 | IND | ||
| 68 | Pradeep Kumar R.A. | 2264 | IND | ||
| 69 | K. Praneeth Surya | 2258 | IND | ||
| 70 | Kulkarni Chinmay | 2256 | IND | ||
| 71 | WGM | Swathi Ghate | F | 2254 | IND |
| 72 | Tiwari Arjun | 2251 | IND | ||
| 73 | IM | Deshmukh Anup | 2246 | IND | |
| 74 | Natarajan C. | 2237 | IND | ||
| 75 | Sidhant Mohapatra | 2233 | IND | ||
| 76 | Barretto Franz | 2222 | PHI | ||
| 77 | Deshpande Aniruddha | 2217 | IND | ||
| 78 | Rishi Sardana | 2213 | IND | ||
| 79 | Visakh Nr | 2205 | IND | ||
| 80 | Lokesh P. | 2198 | IND | ||
| 81 | Vignesh Nr | 2188 | IND | ||
| 82 | Patil Pratik | 2182 | IND | ||
| 83 | WGM | Kiran Manisha Mohanty | F | 2179 | IND |
| 84 | Xu Huahua | F | 2177 | CHN | |
| 85 | WFM | Chandika Divyasree | F | 2167 | IND |
| 86 | Wang Doudou | F | 2152 | CHN | |
| 87 | Pratyusha Bodda | F | 2128 | IND | |
| 88 | Dahale Atul | 2123 | IND | ||
| 89 | Krishna Teja N | 2118 | IND | ||
| 90 | WFM | Bharathi R. | F | 2101 | IND |
| 91 | WFM | Raghavi N. | F | 2098 | IND |
| 92 | Lama Surbir | 2089 | NEP | ||
| 93 | FM | Hamal Manish | 2064 | NEP | |
| 94 | Chaithanyaa K.G. | 2061 | IND | ||
| 95 | Vaishali R | F | 2000 | IND | |
| 96 | FM | Shrestha Sujendra Prasad | 1994 | NEP | |
| 97 | Madhurima Shekhar | F | 1951 | IND | |
| 98 | Aradhya Garg | 1942 | IND | ||
| 99 | FM | Harshal Shahi | 1941 | IND |
