New Tournament Announced: 'Tata Steel Chess India'
A new blitz and rapid tournament will be held in November in Kolkata, India. Chess.com is partnering with the tournament.
Tata Steel Chess India 2018 is a new super-tournament scheduled for November 9-14. The tournament format is similar to what is used in the Grand Chess Tour: three days of rapid chess and two days of blitz.
The location is the Indian Council for Cultural Relations in Kolkata, India. The participants are a mix of international top grandmasters and Indian stars:
Tata Steel Chess India 2018 | Participants
| # | Fed | Name | Elo | Rapid | Blitz | Born |
| 1 | Shakhriyar Mamedyarov | 2820 | 2794 | 2808 | 1985 | |
| 2 | Levon Aronian | 2780 | 2802 | 2854 | 1982 | |
| 3 | Wesley So | 2776 | 2808 | 2771 | 1993 | |
| 4 | Viswanathan Anand | 2771 | 2737 | 2786 | 1969 | |
| 5 | Hikaru Nakamura | 2763 | 2844 | 2893 | 1987 | |
| 6 | Sergey Karjakin | 2760 | 2792 | 2836 | 1990 | |
| 7 | Pentala Harikrishna | 2743 | 2743 | 2706 | 1986 | |
| 8 | Santosh Gujrathi Vidit | 2711 | 2660 | 2727 | 1994 | |
| 9 | Surya Shekhar Ganguly | 2622 | 2608 | 2547 | 1983 | |
| 10 | Nihal Sarin* | 2572 | 2127 | 2506 | 2004 | |
| 11 | Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu* | 2519 | 1736 | 2366 | 2005 |
*Nihal Sarin only plays the rapid; Praggnanandhaa R only the blitz.
Besides appearance fees, the players will be playing for a total prize money in the two events of US$ 40,000 with first prizes of U.S. $10,000 and U.S. $7,500 in the rapid and blitz, respectively.
The main sponsor is Tata Steel, the same company that is behind the annual classical tournament in Wijk aan Zee, Netherlands. The two tournaments also share the same Dutch tournament director, Jeroen van den Berg.
The tournament is planned to be held for several years to come. Sunil Bhaskaran, vice president of corporate services for the main sponsor, said: "Tata Steel intends to make Tata Steel Chess India a world-class and most sought-after event in professional chess in the years to come. Kolkata has been the nerve centre of chess and it is in the fitness of things that the city hosts the biggest chess tournament that the country has seen."
The tournament has been conceptualized and will be conducted by Gameplan Sports Pvt Ltd, a 20-year-old sports marketing company that has been involved with several top sports tournaments in India over the last two decades.
Chess.com is partnering with the tournament and will be responsible for the relay of the games and the live streaming commentary.
The tournament website, TataSteelChess.in, is up and social media accounts are active on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. The official hashtag is #TSChessIndia. The full press release can be found here.
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Peter Doggers joined a chess club a month before turning 15 and still plays for it. He used to be an active tournament player and holds two IM norms. Peter has a Master of Arts degree in Dutch Language & Literature. He briefly worked at New in Chess, then as a Dutch teacher and then in a project for improving safety and security in Amsterdam schools. Between 2007 and 2013 Peter was running ChessVibes, a major source for chess news and videos acquired by Chess.com in October 2013. As our Director News & Events, Peter writes many of our news reports. In the summer of 2022, The Guardian’s Leonard Barden described him as “widely regarded as the world’s best chess journalist.”
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