By IANS
New Delhi : Asian Games champion and World No. 2 Koneru Humpy will lead the Indian challenge at the chess events at the second Asian Indoor Games in Macau, which get underway Friday.
Humpy rated at 2606 is the fourth strongest player in India after Viswanathan Anand (2801), P Harikrishna (2668) and Krishnan Sasikiran (2661).
India has fielded an eight-member team, comprising four each in men and women’s sections. The women’s contingent is led by Humpy, double gold medallist at the Asian Games championship, and the other members are Delhi’s Tania Sachdev (2413) and the Chennai sisters, S Vijayalakshmi (2464) and S Meenakshi (2336).
In the men’s section, Sasikiran’s teammates will be national champion Surya Sekhar Ganguly (2585), Grandmaster Deepan Chakravarty (2492) and Arun Prasad (2423).
Humpy recently became only the second women in history to cross an elo rating of 2600. At 2606, she is second only to Judit Polgar (2708), who no longer plays in women’s events and figures only in Open events.
On offer in Macau are nine sets of medals. The team events will be mixed, while the individual events will be separate for men and women in all three sections.
Both Anand, who was tired after the World Championships, and Pentala Harikrishna, who is busy with commitments in Europe, opted out of the event.
Bharat Singh, the joint secretary of the All India Chess Federation is accompanying the team as the manager. “(Koneru) Humpy is our top star after having won two gold medals in Asian Games at Doha. We expect a lot from her here also. I am sure Sasi also wants to make up for missing out on the medals in Doha, though he was part of the gold medal winning team,” said Bharat.
Chess will be played in three formats with the standard format (being called Classical here) see the whole game last 90 minutes with increment of 30 seconds per move. The Rapid format will have 25 minutes with increment of 10 seconds per move and the Blitz Games will last three minutes with increment of 2 seconds per move.
The blitz chess team and individual (M & W) shall be 9-round Swiss system events. From the team event, the best two scores on each board shall qualify for the individual event provided they must have played all six rounds.
Chess makes its debut at Asian Indoor Games after being introduced in the Asian Games in December in Doha, Qatar, where India won the team gold and Humpy took the women’s gold medal.
The Second Asian Indoor Games, which feature 17 official sports and three exhibition sports, will be held in Macau from October 26 to November 3 with over 4,000 athletes from 43 countries and regions to vie for gold medals in 151 events.