Sport - Chess

India has a fair chance

CHENNAI: A 62-player Indian chess contingent will arrive in Vietnam on Sunday to participate in the World Youth Chess Championships in the under-8, 10, 12, 14, 16 and 18 categories, in open and girls only draws.

India has the second largest contingent after host Vietnam with 96. The next highest is Russia with 48. The total strength of the Indian contingent is 110 including the coaches and others.

The first of the eleven Swiss rounds begins on Sunday and the tournament ends on October 30.

Indians have a fair shot at medals in the five Open and three girls categories.

In the under-8, Jeet Jain, Abhimanyu Puranik and Bhaskar Gupta are seeded one, two and four. Diptayan Ghosh and Sidhant Mohapatra are seeded two and five among 91 players in the under-10 category. In the under-12, Shiven Khosla and Girish Koushik are seeded second and fifth.

In the under-14, N. Srinath is seeded second and will have to battle it out with top seed Polandâs Swiercz and 2007 World Under-12 champion Daniel Naroditzky of USA.

India has three International Masters in the under-16 — S.P. Sethuraman, B. Adhiban and M. Shyam Sundar. But the top seed in this category is Ter Sahakyan, an Armenian with a near grandmaster rating of 2495.

The under-18 has one British and two Vietnamese grandmasters as top seeds.

In the under-8 girls’, Riya Savant of Goa is the top seed as she is the only FIDE-rated player among 55. In the under-10 girls’ section,

Sweety Patel is seeded second and Ivana Furtado fourth. In the under-14 girls’, the Orissa talent Padmini Rout is top seed with last year’s bronze medal winner in the under-12 girls, Shalmali Gagare seeded sixth.

At the same championship last year at Antalya, Turkey, India had one gold (Ivana Furtado, under-8 girls), two bronze (Prince Bajaj, u-10 and Shalmali Gagare, girls u-14). A disastrous last round had cost the country quite a few medals.

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