Harikrishna, Harika head Indian challenge at Grand Swiss

P. Harikrishna and D. Harika will spearhead the Indian challenge in the year’s richest Swiss League event - the $425,000 FIDE Chess.com Grand Swiss - beginning at Riga, Latvia on Wednesday.

P. Harikrishna has been seeded seventh at the $425,000 FIDE Chess.com Grand Swiss. (File Image)

P. Harikrishna leads a 10-man Indian squad in the year’s richest Swiss League event - the $425,000 FIDE Chess.com Grand Swiss - beginning at Riga, Latvia on Wednesday. In the women’s section, which offers $125,000 in prize money. D. Harika spearheads the five-member Indian team.

The event will feature the likes of World No. 2 Fabiano Caruana (USA), Levon Aronian (Armenia), Alireza Firouzja and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave (both France).

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Besides the seventh seed Harikrishna, the other members of the Indian squad are, B. Adhiban, Nihal Sarin, D. Gukesh, K. Sasikiran, Arjun Erigaisi, S. P. Sethuraman, R. Praggnanandhaa, Surya Shekhar Ganguly and Raunak Sadhwani.

Among the women, apart from fourth seed Harika, the other Indians are R. Vaishali, Padmini Rout, Vantika Agarwal and Divya Deshmukh.

From this elite competition, the top two finishers qualify for the 2022 Candidates tournament while the rest from the top-eight will get to play in the 2022 FIDE Grand Prix.

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The winner receives $70,000 while even those finishing between the 31st and 40th places will get $2,000. In the women’s section, the winner gets $20,000 and those occupying between 16th and 20th places receive $2,000.

The time-control for this 11-round event is: 100 minutes for the first 40 moves, followed by 50 minutes for the next 20 moves, followed by 15 minutes for the rest of the game with an increment of 30 second per move from the first move.

The players can’t agree to draw the game before black’s 30th move. However, a claim for a draw before black’s 30th move is permitted in case of a three-fold repetition of moves.