Gurugram to host 61st National Chess Championship despite weather woes

Jalgram, they are calling this city now.

The tongue-in-cheek reference is to the waterlogged roads in certain areas due to the heavy rain over the past few days. Social media is awash with images of cars and people moving along roads that look more like a river.

This northern Indian city, a major hub for IT and finance, is set to host a National sporting event. The ominous weather is unlikely to cause much trouble.

Rain or shine, chess should be fine.

The 61st edition of the National Championship, which opens at the RPS International School, has a large field of more than 340 players. Among them are several former champions.

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The formidable list of champions is headed by Surya Shekhar Ganguly. The Kolkata-based chess player holds a record that will take some beating: he won the titles six years in a row, from 2003 to 2008.

He is the top seed, with an Elo rating of 2583. Abhijeet Gupta is seeded second, also rated 2583. “Ganguly becomes the first seed because the alphabetical order is taken into account when players with identical ratings also have the same title (in this case, both are Grandmasters),” explains the chief arbiter R. Anantharam.

Abhijeet, too, is a champion from the past. He had won the crown in 2011.

He was placed ninth in the last edition at Pune. The winner was S.P. Sethuraman, seeded third here, followed by Diptayan Ghosh and Karthik Venkataraman, the champion in the 59th edition. 19 Grandmasters are in the fray, including them.

There are 12 International Masters, too. So, the untitled players would have chances to try for the GM or IM norm.

And there is a total prize fund of Rs. 30 lakh. The champion will get richer by Rs. 6 lakh.