Chennai, July 28 (UNI) With a good mix of experienced elite players, dashing debutant and promising prodigies, six Indian teams, comprising 30 players, are all set to bring glory as they begin their challenge at the 44th edition of the Chess Olympiad on Friday.
Having the four-time world champion Vishanathan Anand as the mentor of the Team and with an rich array of talent, the Indian team has the wherewithal to come out with a memorable performance and better the 2014 performance in this mind game of 64 squares.
In the 2014 Chess Olympiad held at Tromso, Norway India won a bronze medal in the open category--the best ever performance so far--and in the 2020 virtual Olympiad, India won the joint gold medal while in the 2021 virtual Olympiad, India finished with a bronze medal.
A record total of 30 Indian players across six teams (Three in open and three women) will be participating at the Olympiad. Each team will have 5 members out of which four will be fielded in each round.
It is also India's largest contingent ever taking part at the Olympiad, which is being hosted in India for the first-time ever.
The Captain of the Team, in most cases non-playing, will decide the team composition. The host countries can field two teams, but India could field one additional team in both the categories as the total number of teams were odd.
The three Indian open teams are seeded 2nd, 11th and 17th respectively. The second seeded India-1 Open team consists of Vidit Gujrathi, P.Harikrishna, Arjun Erigaisi, S.L. Narayan and Sasikaran Krishnan.
The India-2 Open team members are Nihal Sarin, D.Gukesh, B.Adhiban, R.Praggnanandhaa and Raunak Sadhwani.
The India-3 open team comprises Surya Shekhar Ganguly, S.P. Sethuraman, Abhijeet Gupta, Karthikeyan Murali and Abhimanyu Puranik.
Incidentally, all the 15 players in the Open Team are Grandmasters.
In the women’s section, India-1 team is seeded first while India-2 and India-3 team are seeded 11th and 16th respectively.
The India-1 women’s team consists of Koneru Humpy, D.Harika, R.Vaishali, Tania Sachdev and Bhakti Kulkarni.
The India-2 women’s team members are Vantika Agrawal, Soumya Swaminathan, Mary Ann Gomes, Padmini Rout and Divya Deshmukh.
The India-3 women’s team comprises Eesha Karavade, Sahithi Varshini, Pratyusha Bodda, Nandhidhaa PV and Vishwa Vasnawala.
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