A total of ten Indian players will be eyeing qualification for the Candidates Tournament when they take part in the Chess World Cup, beginning in Khanty Mansiysk, Russia, from Monday.
Viswanathan Anand, though, will not be competing this time around. He will be featuring in the Grand Swiss meet instead. In the last Chess World Cup, none of the seven Indian players who had participated could go further than the third round.
The finalists of the Chess World Cup will qualify for the Candidates cycle and the winner of that tournament will get to play the current world champion Magnus Carlsen in the World Chess Championship in November 2020.
After hosts Russia, India will have the most number of players competing at the Chess World Cup.
P Harikrishna, Vidit Gujrathi, B Adhiban, Surya Sekhar Ganguly, P Sethuraman, SL Narayanan, Abhijeet Gupta, Karthikeyan Murali, Nihal Sarin and Aravindh Chithambaram will be representing India this time around.