Delhi to host chess meet in December

New Delhi, Nov 30 (IANS) The national capital will play host to another chess meet, the Rs.12 lakh AICF-AAI Cup Dec 20-30.

The six-player double round-robin format category-18 tournament will be played at the Airport Authority of Incia Club (AAI) here. All players, with an average rating of over 2675 ELO points, would play each other twice – once with white pieces and next with black.

This is the second edition of the AICF-AAI Cup, which was a category-17 event last year. The tournament was won by Fabiano Caruana of Italy in its inaugural edition and the player has subsequently moved into the top-10 of the FIDE world rankings.

All India Chess Federation (AICF) secretary Bharat Singh Chauhan said, “The list of players for this tournament is the best line up India have ever seen and we are expecting very tough competition in the ten days of the tournament.”

This year’s star attraction would be GM Radoslaw Wojtaszek of Poland. Wojtaszek is a top-50 player and would be looking to add valuable rating points to his tally.

Leading the charge of challengers against him would be GM Anton Korobov of Ukraine, who boasts of a 2700+ rating and Russia’s in-form player GM Evgeny Alekseev.

Former national champion GM K. Sasikiran would lead the Indian challenge with 2008 World Junior champion GM Abhijeet Gupa and world’s second youngest Grandmaster and reigning Asian champion Parimarjan Negi completing the line up.

“It is a great achievement for Indian chess that an event of such a stature is happening in India. Personally I am thrilled to be part of the tournament and would do my best to keep the title in the country after the 10 rounds of competition,” said Negi.

“I haven’t had great performances in the last few months starting with the Oympiad. For the amount of preparations that have gone into it, I haven’t played well. So this tournament would be the right opportunity for me to stage a comeback of sorts and get back to winning ways,” he added.

IANS 2012-11-30 18:30:23