Juniors gear up for World Chess today

And for those who fail incomparison, like Alexander Onischuk, Mathew Sadler and Sergei Rublevsky, who came as favourites for the world junior last time when Miladinovic triumphed, there is only one way to get back to business: hard work. No wonder, the trio is now among the elite GMs in the world after their slip in Kozhikode five years ago.

The World Junior Championship is slowly regaining the status as the stepping stone to World championship competition after a long gap. Viswanathan Anand, when he came to inaugurate the World junior in Kozhikode in 1993, made a significant observation when he said the field then was considerably weaker than when he played in Baguio. Five years later, if he were to come here again, Anand would acknowledge that this is by far the strongest world junior held in two decades.

If the presence of the youngest GM Ruslan Ponomariov of Ukraine (Elo 2,585) is not enough to upgrade the world junior, then there are four more GMs, usually a rare commodity in the under-20 competition, to instantly propel theevent to a status of its own. The GMs in the past had nothing to hope for from the World junior in the last decade because the GM result was what they could get from this event, while in the 1970s, chess was not so young as to produce so many teenaged GMs.

So then why this sudden change? Miladinovic spots the beginning of a new leit-motif in the changed attitude of the young GMs. “It is business. Now that the World championship has big money even for first round losers, the world junior champion, a direct qualifier, gets a good reward,” he says. In Europe, these young GMs would not have got the chance to qualify from their zonals as champion and so that is a vote for FIDE and its professionalisation of chess.

Ponomariov will be up against compatriot Vladimir Baklan (2,585), Alexander Galkin (2,540), Mihail Kobalia (2,505), both from Russia, Haris Krakops (2,510) of Latvia and Vescovi Giovanni (2,525) of Brazil, Zhang Zhong (2,510) of China and Dao Thien Hai (2,580) of Vietnam, going strictly byrating. Of these, Krakops, Zhong and Giovanni are not GMs but then it does not matter.

Mildinovic came to Kozhikode as the 17th seed and went back as No.1. So there is hope for his own ward Banikas Hristodoulos of Greece (Elo 2490 and probably 2,530 in January) and India’s Krishnan Sasikiran (2,470) to upset the odds if their individual results are anything to go by. Sasikiran has been consistently beating 2,500-2,600 GMs in tournaments and if he can reproduce his form in the Indian Independence GM event in Kozhikode earlier this year, India would unearth its second World junior champion in the next two weeks.

Sasikiran is seeded 12th here. The other Indian entries are: Neelotpal Das, Sandipan Chanda, Tejas Bakre, R R Laxman, Manthan Chokshi, S Satyapragyan, Harikrishna, Beenish Bhatia, Rishipal Singh, Saurabh Kherdekar, Ramu K, Praveen R Menon, Gillford Thankhiew and Vikramaditya Kamble. Of these, only Sasi, Karthik and Bakre are normal entries while the rest have been fielded using the provision ofFIDE’s special entry status of giving chances to talented youngsters.