Five-time World Champion Viswanathan Anand is all set to make a return during the World Rapid and Blitz team chess championship as a part of the Freedom team. The side will be led by FIDE CEO Emil Sutovsly, which only features Anand as the sole Indian in the team.
The hot favourites for the tournament will be the WR Chess team, which will be spearheaded by Ian Nepomniachtchi of Russia on the top board, as Magnus Carlsen won’t take part in the competition. The World No.1 refused to take part in the FIDE event. Arjun Erigaisi will also be on the top board and will be assisted by by P Harikrishna on the second board.
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World junior champion V Pranav is a welcome addition to the side alongside Luke Leon Mendonca, who is the next rising star in Indian chess behind the the quartet of world champion D Gukesh, Arjun, R Praggnanandhaa and Aravindh Chithambaram.
The event will also see Nihal Sarin in action, as he will represent the fifth-seed Ashdod elite chess club. Nihal and Anand will play as the top seed on top board like Erigaisi, but the presence of D Gukesh and Carlsen will be missed as they decided to skip the event.
The WR Chess team is stacked with the Nepomniachtchi, Firouzja Alireza, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, Hikaru Nakamura, Alexandra Kostenuik, and Wesley So on the side. As part of the rules of the competition, every round has to have a female player as well as a player rated less than 2200 on the FIDE rating list that was last published on June 1.
This has been added to make the dynamics of the tournament more exciting than any other team event.
The winner of each competition will get 110000 and 75000 US Dollars, respectively.
