Chennai

India is hosting the 44th edition of the Chess Olympiad at Mamallapuram, Chennai from July 28 to August 10.

The world’s biggest chess event will witness a record 187 countries taking part with 188 teams in the Open section and 162 in the Women's section.

This is the highest ever participation in a Chess Olympiad.

A record total of 30 Indian players across six teams will be participating in the event. Each team will have 5 members out of which four will be fielded in each round.

The Olympiad will be an 11 Round Swiss League event. The host countries can field two teams but India could field one additional team in both categories as the total number of teams were odd.

The three Indian open teams are seeded 2nd, 11th and 17th respectively.

The second-seeded India - 1 Open team consists of Vidit Gujrathi, P Harikrishna, Arjun Erigaisi, SL Narayan and Sasikaran Krishnan.

The second Indian team members are Nihal Sarin, D Gukesh, B Adhiban, R Praggnanandhaa and Raunak Sadhwani.

The third open team comprises Surya Shekhar Ganguly, S.P. Sethuraman, Abhijeet Gupta, Karthikeyan Murali and Abhimanyu Puranik.

Incidentally, all the 15 players in the Open Team are Grandmasters.

In the 2014 Chess Olympiad held at Tromso, Norway India won a bronze medal in the open category and in the 2020 virtual Olympiad, India won the joint gold medal.

ALSO READ: Would like to fill Olympics void at CWG: Indian boxer Ashish

In the last Olympiad held virtually in 2021 India had finished with a bronze medal.