What was considered improbable only a few years ago has finally turned a reality. Continuing with the trend of sizable increase in the prize-money year after year, the 2019 edition of the Delhi International Open Grandmasters chess tournament offers a whopping Rs. 1,01,00,000 spread over three rating-categories.
Not counting the dollar-events held in the country, apart from golf, chess is the only other discipline to breach the mark of ₹10 million for prize-fund.
No wonder, the event has attracted record number of entries, with 29 Grandmasters, 31 International Masters and three Woman Grandmasters from 20 countries forming the creamy layer of the 317-player field in Category A where ₹35 lakh is at stake. The event, beginning at the Indira Gandhi Stadium here on Wednesday, is the third stop of the four-city caravan that has already travelled through Bhopal and Mumbai. Chennai hosts the concluding leg later this month. With most of the leading Indian players already committed to play in other elite events in different parts of the world, local boy Vaibhav Suri leads the home challenge as the fourth seed, behind favourite, Farrukh Amonatov (Tajikistan), Alexandr Predke (Russia) and Levan Pantsulaia (Georgia).
Other title aspirants
Other leading Indian title-aspirants are former champion Abhijeet Gupta, young talent S.L. Narayanan and two-time former National champion M. Karthikeyan.
Given the depth of the field, with 42 players rated above 2400, the race to the top-prize of ₹6 lakh is expected to be very tough.
Among the women, it will be interesting to watch the progress of recently-crowned Asian champion Padmini Rout through the 10-round grind.
Category B and Category C, to be played in that order, concurrently with Category A, have so far attracted 926 and 1270 entries, respectively.