Chess Olympiad: Indian teams seeded second. Will there be a Gukesh-Liren clash?

Chennai, July 22
Will there be a clash between the World Chess Champion and Chinese Grandmaster (GM) Ding Liren of China and the title Challenger from India GM D.Gukesh at the Budapest Olympiad?

As per the details published by the noted chess portal chess-results.com Gukesh and Liren will be playing on the second board for India and Liren respectively in the Open category.

There are chances of both crossing swords at Budapest ahead of their title clash later this year in Singapore, if there is a match between India and China in the Olympiad.

Meanwhile, for the Olympiad the US team has been top seeded followed by India, China and Uzbekistan seeded second, third and fourth respectively as per chess-results.com.

The Indian team comprises of GMs Arjun Erigaisi (World No.4 Rating 2778), Gukesh (Rank 7, Rating 2763), R. Praggnanandhaa (Rank 8, Rating 2757), Vidit Santhosh Gujrathi (Rank 22, Rating 2720) and the reserve P. Harikrishna (Rank 37, Rating 2695).

The team is headed by non-playing captain GM Srinath.

The US team includes GMs Fabiano Caruana (2796), Wesley So (2757), Levon Aronian (2729), Leinier Dominguez Perez (2748) and Ray Robson (2700), as per chess-results.com.

The players for the Chinese team are: GMs Wei Yi (2755), Liren (2745), Yu Yangyi (2720), Bu Xiangzhi (2697) and Wang Yue (2652), the chess portal lists out.

In the women’s category, Georgia are the top seed country followed by India, Poland and China as second, third and fourth seed, respectively.

The Indian Women’s team for the chess Olympiad will be GM D.Harika (Rank 11, Rating 2491), GM R.Vaishali (Rank 14, Rating 2488), International Master (IM) and Woman GM (WGM) Divya Deshmukh (Rank 20, Rating 2464), IM and WGM Vantika Agarwal (Rank 63, Rating 2390) and the reserve player IM and WGM Tania Sachdev (Rank 66, Rating 2386).

The Indian team’s non-playing captain is GM Abhijit Kunte.

A total of 374 teams (Open 193,Women 181) will be fighting it out for the honours in the Olympiad.

The chess Olympiad will be held between September 10 – 22, 2024 i Budapest, Hungary.