By IANS
New Delhi : Grandmaster and National chess champion Surya Shekhar Ganguly will spearhead the Indian challenge at the sixth Parsvnath International Chess tournament Jan 12 to 20 at Modern School Barakhamba Road here.
The field, which comprises 15 Grandmasters and over 40 titled players, will have more than 400 participants from 20 countries vying a record prize pool of Rs.1 million.
The field will also include Commonwealth champion R.B. Ramesh and Georgia-born Spaniard Elizbar Ubilava, former trainer of Viswanathan Anand.
The top seed will be Iran’s Ghaem Maghami Ehsan and the other Iranian Grandmaster in the fray is Mahjoob Morteza.
Ziaur Rahman will lead the Bangladeshi challenge in the 10-round event while Grandmaster Igor Kurnosov will represent the Russian interest.
Besides, there are three Grandmasters from Uzbekistan Saidali Iuldashev, Marat Dzhumaev and Safin Shukhrat.
The Parsvnath event is very popular with Indian players seeking norms. This time around Delhi’s Sahaj Grover, the former under-10 world champion, will be looking for a repeat performance after the recently concluded Commonwealth championship where he made his maiden International Master norm.
Also in the norm hunt will be International Master and Asian Women’s champion Tania Sachdev who will be vying for her second Grandmaster norm. Apart from these two there will be at least 40-50 norm seekers for International Master, Grandmaster, Women Grandmaster and Women International Master norms.
As a run up to the event, the Delhi Chess Association has planned a gala simultaneous exhibition match between Grandmasters and some of the budding youngsters and enthusiasts of the country.