FIDE World Junior Chess Championship (U20) 2019 officially kicked-off on Tuesday in the Indian capital New Delhi. This is the second big event happening in India in the month of October after the successful completion of the World Youth Championships a few days ago. The open section of the World Junior has 94 registered players including 78 titled players with 15 GMs and 31 IMs. Notably, there are also 18 players above the rating of 2500.
The girls’ section attracted 95 participants including Amin Tabatabaei (2642), Zhu Jiner (2507), as well as, other top-rated U20 women players across the globe are taking part in the tournament as rating favourites in their respective categories.
The top seed of the tournament is GM Amin Tabatabaei, even though Iranian GM Tabatabaei is the favourite, he will be provided stiff resistance from Aravindh Chithambaram and Karthikeyan Murali, second and third seeds of the competition respectively.
The newly crowned World Youth Chess Championship winners U18 Open and Girls category 14-year old Praggnanandhaa and Polina Shuvalova are also in New Delhi and will try to repeat a dose of their Mumbai success. The participants will play 11 rounds Swiss system; the world junior champions will be crowned on October 25.
D.V. Sundar, honorary Vice-President of FIDE in his speech highlighted that “during the elections, I was in the opposing team of Arkady Dvorkovich. We lost to a very desirable candidate. A few minutes after the defeat Dvorkovich came to me and said, I do not know if you are going to fight for the Vice President’s spot, but I would like to have you as an honorary Vice President. At that point I realized that he was not a politician but a statesman. Later Dvorkovich confirmed this by saying, “It doesn’t matter to me whether someone gave me a vote or not. The most important thing is to work together for the development of chess” said Sundar.
FIDE President Arkady Dvorkovich congratulated the Indian Chess Federation on the successful organization of the recently completed World Youth Championship and stressed the importance of youth and junior chess.
