Viswanathan Anand out in the open after 23 years

Curiously, it will be after 23 years that Anand is playing in an open event when he takes the field at the Tradewise Gibraltar Chess Fesival in the Masters section.

Last month, Magnus Carlsen played in a Swiss event, the Qatar Open in Doha where the top 20 players were rated above 2700 Elo-points. 

In the first round of Gibraltar, Anand drew Hungarian International Master and Woman GM Vajda Szidonia Lazarne, rated more than 400 Elo points below the Indian. The five-time World champion had last played in a Swiss tournament at Biel in 1993 where he competed as the top seed in the Inter-zonal and qualified as the last Candidate. 

Since then, Anand has not looked back. He played in the elite category 18,19,20 closed tournaments where he did not meet anyone below 2700-points in general and so Gibraltar would be quite a different experience for the Indian. 

Anand is the third seed after Hikaru Nakamura of United States and Maxime Vachier- Lagrave of France. India’s P Harikrishna is the fourth seed in the tournament. The former World junior champion figures in the top 15 of the world federation (Fide) rating list. The winner in the 10-round event stands to win Rs 20 lakh as prize money. 

There are 18 other Indians in the fray and this contingent is only the third behind Germany (25) and England (22). Among them are Surya Shekhar Ganguly, Vidit Gujrathi, SP Sethuraman and Abhijeet Gupta. Grandmaster D Harika will be vying for one of the top women’s prize.