Sasikiran spearheads Indian challenge in Chess Olympiad
In the absence of Viswanathan Anand, Krishnan Sasikiran will be India's best bet in the Chess Olympiad that starts here on Monday.
The 11-round events in open and women's category will see most of the world's top players in action for their respective countries but once again Indian stars Viswanathan Anand and Koneru Humpy have decided not to play.
Anand last played in the 2006 Olympiad where he did not do well, and it was the same year that Humpy also played the last time in the biennial team event.
Interestingly, among the top 10 rated players in the world currently, only Anand will be missing the Olympiad and among the top-10 women players, only Humpy will be missing the action.
That aside, the Olympiad remains the biggest stage. There will be 157 teams competing in the open and 118 teams in the women's section. Each team comprises of five players out of which four get to play in each round.
The match points will be taken into account and every win will fetch two and every draw one point. The event will see 1,380 players in action, including 247 GMs, 63 WGMs, 160 IMs, 87 WIMs, 81 FMs and 80 WFMs.
Sasikiran has been a star performer for the country in team events and without Anand, he led the Indian team to bronze medal finish in the last world team championship where only 10 teams take part based on qualification criteria.
Apart from Sasikiran, P Harikrishna, Surya Shekhar Ganguly, G N Gopal and B Adhiban comprise the Indian men's team.
The women's team is also quite upbeat. D Harika is a fast improving player past the 2500 Elo rating mark and close to becoming a Grandmaster. Tania Sachdev, Eesha Karavade, S Meenakshi and Nisha Mohota complete the remaining line up.
Towards the end of the Olympiad, the FIDE elections will also take place wherein incumbent Kirsan Illumzhinov is facing a serious challenge from former world champion Anatoly Karpov.
Kirsan has been the president of FIDE since 1995 and has never faced any serious opposition. In the last elections, businessman Bessel Kok was the opposing candidate who did not get the required response.
However, this time things seem to be different as Kirsan has been living out of suitcase generating support for his re-election campaign like Karpov. Many top players in the world have supported Karpov.
Former world champion Garry Kasparov is playing a major role in Karpov campaign and his protege world number one Magnus Carlsen has also made his stance clear in support of Karpov. A couple of weeks ago a fund raiser for the campaign was held in London in which top British GMs participated.
It looks like a close call with just 10 days to go for the voting.
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