Anand gets top billing at world chess

Viswanathan Anand will start as the top seed but a tough contest is on cards in the chess World championship that starts here from tomorrow.

Viswanathan Anand will start as the top seed but a tough contest is on cards in the chess World championship that starts here from tomorrow.

After his recent elevation as the top ranked player in the world in ELO ratings, this will be Anand’s first major event in Classical chess and the Indian will have to give his best if he has to regain the title he won in 2001.

For chess buffs across the world the extravaganza, arguably the strongest ever tournament in the history of the game, promises exciting chess spread well over a fortnight when the eight top players of the planet will take on each other twice to determine the new World champion.

Story continues below this ad

The onus will be on Russian Vladimir Kramnik who was crowned the new world champion in 2006 after his victory over Veselin Topalov of Bulgaria in the reunification match, famous as ‘toiletgate’, at Elista in Russia.

Kramnik is the second seed in the event on ELO scales but is amongst the favourites for the crown here. For the record, the eight-players double round robin tournament will be played under classical chess rules and all games can last up to seven hours. There will be 14 games in all and the new world champion will be decided based on the number of points scored from these games.

Among other participants, Armenian Levon Aronian is also expected to be among the contenders for the world title. A former World Junior champion, Aronian has been quite impressive in the recent past and is amongst the few players who have beaten Anand in classical chess recently.

Besides the big three – Anand, Kramnik and Aronian, Peter Leko of Hungary, Russians Peter Svidler, Alexander Morozevich and Alexander Grishchuk and Boris Gelfand of Israel complete the players’ line up.

Story continues below this ad

The list is quite impressive as five of the top ten players in the world are present here while all fall under top-15 today.

The average rating of the tournament is a staggering 2751 ELO rating points which puts the event at category-21 according to FIDE charts.

• The players with ratings: Viswanathan Anand (Ind, 2792); Vladimir Kramnik (Rus, 2769); Alexander Morozevich (Rus, 2758); Peter Leko (Hun, 2751); Levon Aronian (Arm, 2750); Peter Svidler (Rus, 2735); Boris Gelfand (Isr, 2733); Alexander Grischuk (Rus, 2726).