Asian meet from Aug. 9

By Our Special Correspondent

KOLKATA, AUG. 7. The third Asian individual chess championship will be held at the Gorky Sadan here from August 9 to 17. As many as 30 Grandmasters, 30 International Masters and a clutch of FIDE Masters have confirmed participation in a field of 84.

This is the first time 10 players will qualify for the World Chess meet to be held later this year. This is being introduced for the first time in this meet, informed the All India Chess Federation secretary and FIDE vice-president, Mr. P.T. Ummer Koya, at a press conference.

The first and the second Asian individual meet were open events. This is the first time the participation is being screened through the respective federations of the continent. The championship being an official qualifying meet for the world chess, the world chess body, FIDE has provided the prize money to the tune of $64,000.

Players from Australia, Bangladesh, China, India, Indonesia, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyistan, Lebanon, Pakistan, The Philippines, Qatar, Syria, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Vietnam and Yemen will be seen in action in the SWISS league tournament. Under the FIDE zonal division, Australia comes under Asian Continent.

China's Zhong Zhang, Jun Xu and Xiaomin Peng are the three top ranked players with a rating of 2667, 2646 and 2629 respectively. Indian GM Krishnan Sasikiran is ranked seventh with a rating of 2589.

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