P. Harikrishna leads a 10-man Indian squad in the year’s richest Swiss League event — the $425,000 FIDE Chess.com Grand Swiss — beginning at Riga, Latvia on Wednesday.
In the women’s section, which offers $125,000 in prize money. D. Harika spearheads the five-member Indian team.
The creamy layer of the event is formed by World No. 2 Fabiano Caruana (USA), Levon Aronian (Armenia), Alireza Firouzja and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave (both France).
Besides the seventh seed Harikrishna, other members of the Indian squad are, B. Adhiban, Nihal Sarin, D. Gukesh, K. Sasikiran, Arjun Erigaisi, S.P. Sethuraman, R. Praggnanandhaa, Surya Shekhar Ganguly and Raunak Sadhwani.
Among the women, apart from fourth seed Harika, the other Indians are R. Vaishali, Padmini Rout, Vantika Agarwal and Divya Deshmukh.
From this elite competition, the top two finishers qualify for the 2022 Candidates tournament while the rest from the top-eight will get to play in the 2022 FIDE Grand Prix.
The winner receives $70,000 while even those finishing between the 31st and 40th places will get $2,000. In the women’s section, the winner gets $20,000 and those occupying between 16th and 20th places receive $2,000.
