GM Farrukh Amonatov, Levan Pantsulaia to headline Delhi Open Chess tournament

Grandmaster Farrukh Amonatov of Turkmenistan, Gerogia's Levan Pantsulaia and Russian Alexandre Predke will be among the top players participating in the Delhi Open Chess tournament starting here Wednesday.

The tournament, that will see participation of 29 Grandmasters in a field of over 300 in the premier Group A, offers an unprecedented prize purse of over Rs one crore.

Grandmaster Farrukh, a former winner here, will be the top seed and rating favourite in the premier section but will face stiff competition from the likes of Levan, Alexandre and another Indian star Abhijeet Gupta.

Adding the local flavour to the event will be Vaibhav Suri, who starts as the highest ranked Indian.

Making it an open event this year, the B and C group, that has a rating cap for below 1899 and 1499 players, has already had 900 and 1200 players register for the tournament.

The event will also offer training session for coaches hosted by super coach R B Ramesh along with FI Praful Zaveri and Vishal Sareen.

Youngsters will get a chance to compete with India's youngest ever Grandmaster R Praggnandhaa, former Asian queen Tania Sachdev and GM K Priyadharshan.

"We believe in creating opportunities and that's what we are trying to do here. I had dreamt of a One Crore Prize Fund Chess festival about 30 Years back and here we are living the dream of every chess player in the country. Hopefully we will see many such events in the future in the country," said Delhi Chess Association President Bharat Singh Chauhan.