Indian men seeded 17th, women 8th in Chess Olympiad

The Indian men`s team has been seeded 17th in the 29th Chess Olympiad.

Khanty Mansiysk: The Indian men`s team, sans world champion Viswanathan Anand, was on Sunday seeded

17th while the women`s team has been seeded eighth in the 29th Chess Olympiad here. The women team without Koneru Humpy, who is the second highest ranked woman player in the world. Russia have been given the top billing in both open and women`s section. After a brilliant third place finish in the world team championship earlier this year, the Indian men`s team has reasons to be optimistic about a good performance here but it will take a herculean task if they are to finish among medals. Over the 11-rounds, the Indian team will have to rely mostly on the top three board wherein Krishnan Sasikiran, P Harikrishna and Surya Shekhar Ganguly will take charge. The other two are young guns G N Gopal and B Adhiban and in all important clashes only one of these two is likely to play. D Harika will have to do most of the hard work on the top board for the women team and Tania Sachdev, Eesha Karavade, S Meenakshi and Nisha Mohota would support her. Prior to the Olympiad, both the teams had a training session. While the men team have retained Israeli Grandmaster Lev Psakhis as trainer for the event, Ukrainian Oleg Romanishin is a new inclusion as coach of the women’ team. "The session was simply wonderful and all our players have done a good job, we are hoping for a good performance from them," Bharat Singh Chauhan, Treasurer AICF, who is also the captain of the men`s team said. All India Chess Federation Secretary D V Sundar said all the players will be paid for participation in the Olympiad. "They will be paid based on their ratings," Sundar said. The presence of Vladimir Kramnik, Alexander Grischuk, Peter Svidler, Vladimir Malakhov and Sergey Karjakin make the hosts Russia a formidable team but the likes of Armenia, Ukraine and China can all give the rating-favourties a run for their money. Armenia, the winner on last two occasions will again be led by stalwart Levon Aronian on the top board and with their remarkable team spirit, absolutely necessary in Olympiad, they have it in them again to be amongst the front runners. Amongst the women, the Russian eves are amongst the top team and their top billing is largely due to immense improvement in the ratings of Kosintseva sisters - Tatiana and Nadezhda who are ranked fourth and fifth in the world currently. China remains a major threat to all teams especially in women competition. With Grandmaster Yifan Hao on the top board, the Chinese team is quite balanced. PTI