Chennai, Aug 1 (IANS): The fortnight long SDAT-Ramco World Junior and World Junior Girls Chess Championships, commencing here Tuesday, has attracted a strong field of 19 Grand Masters, 20 International Masters and 21 FIDE Masters and as such is expected to dish out keen fare.
In the girls championship, five WGMs and 13 WIMs and 12 WFMs are taking part, making it one of the strongest-ever fields.
The event will be inaugurated Monday evening by World champion Viswanathan Anand, who is one of only three players to have won the junior title and gone on to win senior crown. The competitions begin Tuesday.
The Junior event is one of the strongest championships in the FIDE activities. The winner is eligible to receive the GM title in the open section and WGM in the girls' section directly. An additional bonus awaits the gold medallist in the girls event as she will also receive an IM norm.
Players scoring the same number of points as that of the gold medallist will also be eligible for GM or WGM norms, as the case may be. The silver and bronze medallists will get IM / WIM titles, irrespective of the points they score.
The Golden Jubilee edition of the Open championship has Matlakov Maxim of Russia as the top seed with an international Elo rating of 2632.
The Indian contingent is spearheaded by Grand Master B Adhiban (Elo 2542) of Tamil Nadu, a former World under-16 champion and his former Velammal School classmate Grand Master SP Sethuraman, also a former World under-16 champion.
WGM Nazi Palkidze of Georgia, with a rating of 2416 heads the 29th edition of the girls' championship, followed by 2010 World Junior Girls Bronze medallist Padmini Rout of India (2348).
Championships in 2010 were held at Chotowa, Poland. Andreikin Dimitry of Russia and Anna Muzychuk of Slovenia were the champions, but neither is participating here.
The championship will be played on a 13-round Swiss format with a time control of 40 moves in 90 minutes and the remaining game in 30 minutes, with an increment of 30 seconds from move 1. Zero tolerance rule will be observed.
India had hosted the World Junior earlier at Calicut (1993 and 1998), Goa (2002) and Kochi (2004).
Anand (1987 - Baguio, Philippines), P Harikrishna (Kochi ) and Abhijeet Gupta (2008 - Gaziantep, Turkey) have won the Open championships and Koneru Humpy (2001 - Athens, Greece), Dronavalli Harika (2008 - Gaziantep, Turkey) and Soumya Swaminathan (2009 - Puerto Madryn, Argentina) have won the girls' titles.
K Muralimohan, international arbiter, FIDE instructor and secretary of Tamil Nadu State Chess Association is the championship director and Prof. R Anantharam, the only A grade international arbiter in India is the chief arbiter of the tournament.
The Championship will be organised at the Hotel Vijay Park and all the foreign participants will be housed there itself. All the games will be webcast live through DGT Chess Boards.