Category 17 event in India announced

No more Amber, the end of Mainz, Linares skipped for a year, no news about MTel... some chess fans have already claimed in our comments that "chess is dead". We won't go that far, but still it's good to see that elsewhere new tournaments are popping up. A category 17 event with Fabiano Caruana, Hou Yifan, Wesley So, Viktor Laznicka, Krishnan Sasikiran and Parimarjan Negi will be held June 21 to July 2, 2011 in New Delhi, India.

As a part of the 100 years celebration of civil aviation in India, the Airports Authority of India (AAI) sponsors a category 17 chess tournament with a prize fund of US $24,500. The AAI is an organization working under the Ministry of Civil Aviation that manages all the airports in India.

The organizers decided to put the emphasis on young talents by inviting Fabiano Caruana (Italy), Hou Yifan (China), Wesley So (Philippines), Viktor Laznicka (Czech Republic), Krishnan Sasikiran and Parimarjan Negi (both India). They will play a double round robin from June 21 to July 2, 2011.

"The game was given to the world by India and we also have the world champion from India in Viswanathan Anand. So it is only logical that the AAI supports an endeavour which showcases India’s ancient game and young talent from around the world," is the obligatory quote coming from Mr. V P Agrawal, Chairman Airports Authority of India at the first press conference held to launch the tournament.

The tournament website doesn't look too promising yet, with no menu items for photos or live games. Besides, there are two players profiles (Negi & Hou Yifan) in the news stream on the home page, but an 'Updating Soon' text under the Player Profiles menu item. But OK, they still have some time to fix that and add more interesting content.

On a side note, we can counter the "chess is dead" phrase even more. As ebutaljib remarked, the Capablanca memorial (May 10-22, Havana, Cuba) is also getting stronger and stronger each year. The top group has Vassily Ivanchuk (UKR, 2779), David Navara (CZE, 2722), Leinier Dominguez (CUB, 2716), Le Quang Liem (VIE, 2689), Lazaro Bruzon (CUB, 2686) and Dmitry Andreikin (RUS, 2686).