Surya Shekhar Ganguly, the top seed from Kolkata with an Elo rating of 2603, is the reigning champion and he starts as a strong favourite here too. And if he picks up the second National ‘A’ title of a calendar year (the last edition was held in Chennai last February and was played in the Swiss system), he would be walking straight into the record books; nobody has won six National ‘A’ titles in a row.
The man who scored a stunning win over him in the Chennai edition, G.N. Gopal, did not confirm his participation till late on Tuesday evening.
M.S. Gururaj, president, South Kanara District Chess Association, which is hosting the event said: “A couple of days ago, his father told me that the dates of a tournament abroad were clashing with the National ‘A’ and that they hadn’t taken a decision yet.”
Even if Gopal doesn’t turn up, it is going to be a pretty strong field of 13 players, including five Grandmasters. Besides Ganguly, the focus would be on young talents like Parimarjan Negi (2597), the second seed, and B. Adhiban, who became the youngest ever winner of the National ‘B’ championship in Goa in September. Negi was the runner-up in that tournament, the qualifying event for the National ‘A’.
Neelotpal Das, Deepan Chakravarthy, Praveen Thipsay, P. Konguvel, Sreeram Jha, K. Ratnakaran, M.S. Thejkumar, S. Satyapragyan, M. Shyam Sundar and Akshayraj Kore complete the line-up.
The 13-round tournament concludes on December 30. It is after 21 years that Karnataka is hosting the National ‘A’; the last time it did, at Tumkur in 1987, a certain Viswanathan Anand was the champion.
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