Top stars for Jr Asian Chess

The $6,600 prize money tournament has attracted entries from 12 nations in the boys’ and eight in the girls’ sections.

The winners will be eligible to participate in the World Junior Championships (30th for boys and 17th for girls) to be held at Yerevan in the erstwhile Soviet Republic of Armenia from September 18 to October 2.

The champion in the tournament, which is to be played in a 11-round Swiss format, will also earn an IM or IWM title directly.

If there is a clear-cut champion (without a tie at the top), the player would be awarded a nine-game statutory Grand Master or Women’s Grand Master’s norm, it was announced by the organisers, the Maharashtra Chess Association (MCA), here last night.

Each nation in the Asian zone (as defined by FIDE and including all the Gulf countries, the Indian sub-continent, Japan, China, Fiji, New Zealand, Australia etc barring Russia, which is a separate zone) is eligible to send its top junior boy or girl player. The host nation can send in another entry.

The players placed in the top three positions in the previous championships join these participants.

In addition, each federation can send extra players as special entries who wil be charged Rs 15,000 each (the amount to go to the world governing body FIDE) to encourage juniors to take part, MCA announced.

The organisers said they did not expect any hitch ingetting a visa for the lone Pakistani participant in the tournament.

The top prize will be worth $1,000 and Indian participants will be given the prize money in Rupees. Each section offers ten prizes with the lowest prize worth $100.

The event is to be inaugurated on August 29 by Maharashtra Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh. After a draw of lots on the same day the tournament proper is to commence on Wednesday.

The participating countries are
Boys:

Australia, Bangladesh, China, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Pakistan, Philippines, Qatar, Sri Lanka, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Vietnam (one entry each) and India (15 entries).

Girls:

Bangladesh, China, Kazakhstan, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Uzbekistan, Vietnam and India (10 entries).

The Indian participants are
Boys:

Harikrishna, who tops the 26 confirmed entries in this group with an ELO rating of 2,500, Ganguly (2498), Neelotpal Das (2410), S Kidambi (2404), S Satyapragyan (2379), Tejas Bakre (2358), Valay Parikh (2270), CJ Arvind (2268), Vikramaditya Kamble (2262), Magesh Chandran (2238), Arjun Tiwari (2218), Pratmesh Mokal (2216), M Satyajit (2150), Akshayraj Kore (2103) and Himanshu Kumar (no ELO rating).

Girls: Aarthie Ramaswamy (ELO rating 2319), Koneru Humpy (2288), Nisha Mohta (2275), Swati Ghate (2246), S Meenakshi (2226), Tania Sachdev (2131), Y Pratibha (2097), JE Kavitha (2028), Sivagami and Sasinas Haritha (both without ELO rating)

Foreign participants
Boys:

Mathew Sonter (Australia, no ELO rating), Fide Master Enamul Hossain (Bangladesh, 2314), Du Shan (China, no ELO rating), Said Rakhimbekov (Kazakhstan, 2290), Taher Mulla Jumaa (Kuwait, no elo rating), Syed Mohd Hassan (Pakistan, no ELO rating), John Paul Gomez (Philippines, no elo rating), Al Sayed Mohammed (Qatar, 2370), PMAB Athukorala (Sri Lanka, no ELO rating), Annaberdiev Meilis (Turkmenistan, 2248) and Filippov Anton (Uzbekistan, no ELO rating).

Girls: Feroza Haque Chowdhary (Bangladesh, no ELO rating), Yu Ting (China, no ELO rating), Madina Duisenova (Kazakhstan, no ELO rating), Beverly Mendoza (Philippines, no ELO rating), Anupama Konara (Sri Lanka, no ELO rating), Levushkina Elena (Uzbekistan, 2103) and Chau Ngoc Giao (Vietnam, no ELO rating).