Abhijeet starts as top seed in Delhi International Chess

Over 700 participants have registered for the tournament which is split into three different sections for the first time since its inception 12 years ago.

The premier event has over 100 participants which makes it one of the strongest tournaments with participation of over 50 titled players, a release from the Delhi Chess Association said.

"This has been done to make the tournament norm-friendly for Indian participants," said B S Chauhan, Organising secretary and also secretary All India Chess Federation.

The premier event will see some of the best players from India participating for a total prize purse of Rs 1.25 million.

Grandmaster Aleksej Aleksandrov of Belarus will be the second seed and Andrey Deviatkin of Russia, Czebe Attila of Hungary, Raset Ziatdinov of United States, Henrik Teske of Germany, Marat Dzhumaev and Dmitry Kayumov of Uzbekistan will make the tournament competitive.

After Abhijeet Gupta, Abhijeet Kunte, B Adhiban, P Magesh Chandran and Commonwealth champion M R Lalith Babu will be seen in action in the tournament to be spread over 10 rounds.

The local challenge will be spearheaded by Grandmasters Sahaj Grover and Vaibhav Suri apart from Tania Sachdev.

The 'B' section, for players rated below 2200 rating, will also start simultaneously and it has a prize pool of Rs 3 lakhs while the section 'C', reserved for players rated below 1900 ELO rating and a prize fund of Rs 600000, will start on January 9.