Panjim: Grandmaster R Praggnanandhaa will hope for an encore as he takes on a strong field, minus the top-three ranked players in the world, in the FIDE World Cup that gets underway here on Saturday.
With Norway’s Magnus Carlsen, and the American duo of Hikaru Nakamura and Fabiano Caruana not competing, world champion D Gukesh and Arjun Erigaisi are the other two big names who will try and make a mark in the prestigious tournament, which has a $2 million prize fund.
More importantly, the tournament has three coveted qualification spots for the 2026 FIDE Candidates Tournament - the gateway to the World Championship match later next year.
As many as 206 top chess exponents from 80 countries will be in Goa for the next four weeks playing the eight-round, single-elimination knockout event, where each match consists of two classical games played under standard time controls. If the score is tied after the classical games, the players will return on the third day for a series of rapid and blitz tie-breaks to decide who advances.
Among the three top Indians, the stakes are the lowest for Gukesh as he is the world champion and doesn’t need to go through the Candidates cycle to qualify for the World Championship sometime later next year.