Amonatov, Martirosyan, Idani, Nihal, Pragg! What a mouth watering blitz event!
Triple C Chess Club will organize perhaps the strongest titled online blitz tournament of 2018 on Playchess. The tournament will feature 10 titled players including 7 GMs and 3 IMs. Tajikistan no.1 Farrukh Amonatov will be the top seed, followed by former European Youth Champion GM Haik Martirosyan. Iranian no.3 Idani Pouya will be the 3rd seed. India's very own Nihal Sarin and Praggnanandhaa will also be seen in action. Debashis Das, Lucas van Foreest, Rakesh Kumar Jena and Anwesh Upadhyaya will join the rest. Padmini Rout will be the only female participant of the tournament. The players will engage in a single round robin event.
Triple C hosts India vs. Rest of the world online blitz blockbuster
Triple C Chess Club which is situated in Cuttack, Odisha has taken the initiative of organizing an online tournament where 3 IMs from Odisha, 2 GMs from rest of the country and 5 GMs from all over the world will play in a single Round Robin tournament with a time control of 3 minutes + 1 second increment. The idea behind this is to make chess more popular in Odisha as well as the different parts of the country as Blitz is a spectator friendly event.
Here is a sneak peek of the players who will be in action tomorrow:
Top seed of the tournament will be Tajikistan no.1 GM Farrukh Amonatov. He won Mumbai Mayors Cup a few months ago this year. Amonatov is very familiar in the Indian chess scene as he is often seen playing GM tournaments all over the country. He is also well known as a trainer and has shaped many talents to take that next big leap in their chess careers.
18-year old Haik Martirosyan is Armenia no. 7. He won European Youth Championship three times, twice in Classical format and once in Blitz. At the beginning of this year he won Armenian Championship The Highest League. He was also the player responsible for beating India at the Olympiad 2018, when he scored an excellent win over GM Krishnan Sasikiran.
GM Idani Pouya is the no.3 ranked player of Iran. He won Goa GM tournament last month. At the beginning of this month, Idani won Chigorin Memorial quite emphatically with a performance rating of 2815. He was the only GM to play in Tehran Championship and he won it scoring 10.0/11 without even playing the 6th round. Pouya is quickly rising through the ranks and it will be exciting to watch him in action.
14-year old Nihal Sarin became the 53rd GM of the country, a few months ago. Besides making his super tournament debut in Tata Steel Chess India 2018 Rapid, Nihal finished 2nd in a Blitz tournament in Dubai immediately after becoming a GM. He is well known for his blitz skills and it will be interesting to see if he can win this tournament.
Odisha's first and only, GM Debashis Das will be seen in action. He is a former National Rapid and National Challengers champion. He has also won ChessBase Online Blitz tournament last year. So he is definitely one of the favourites to win the title.
If we say Praggnanandhaa had a phenomenal year then that would be an understatement as he became the second youngest Grandmaster in chess history, although the record was short lived. He made his fantastic debut against a world class player Wesley So by defeating him in the first game of Leon Masters 2018. Couple of weeks ago he made his super tournament debut where he defeated Sergey Karjakin in his first match of the tournament and made sure Anand's championship chances stayed alive when he drew with Hikaru Nakamura in the final round Tata Steel Chess India 2018 Blitz. Pragg will not have it easy in this tournament, but then the boy has always chosen the hard path and excelled!
His brother Jorden might be more famous for now, but Lucas is a player to watch out for. Born on 3rd March 2001, Lucas is already a GM. He will be playing this blitz event from the Netherlands.
Local talents:
Rakesh Kumar Jena is an International Master from Odisha. He is one of the participants of the tournament, but he is also a coordinator and has worked really hard for the tournament to come to fruition.
Anwesh Upadhyaya is a doctor. Because of his education he has had to slow down his chess journey. But it goes without saying that he is a player with extreme talent. How else would he have become the national rapid champion in 2017!
Four-time National Premier champion, Olympiad individual gold medalist and multiple time member of Indian national team, Padmini Rout needs absolutely no introduction. Padmini is the only female participant in this tournament and rating-wise the last seed, but if the momentum is on her side, we won't be surprised if she pulls many upsets at this event.
Players list:
1. GM Farrukh Amonatov - 2614
2. GM Haik Martirosyan - 2607
3. GM Idani Pouya - 2598
4. GM Nihal Sarin - 2576
5. GM Debashis Das - 2544
6. GM Praggnanandha R - 2530
7. GM Lucas van Foreest - 2499
8. IM Rakesh Kumar Jena - 2394
9. IM Anwesh Upadhyaya - 2362
10. IM Padmini Rout - 2341
Playchess Ids:
Farrukh Amonatov - LastKeks
Haik Martirosyan - Haik Martirosyan
Idani Pouya - pouya eidani2
Nihal Sarin - Nihalsarin
Debashis Das - Debashis Das
Praggnanandha R - chessworld1
Van Foreest Lucas - billyford
Rakesh Kumar Jena - Rakesh Jena
Anwesh Upadhyaya - Anwesh
Padmini Rout - Padmini Rout
Time Control: 3 minutes + 1 second increment
Number of rounds: Total 9 rounds, Single Round-Robin Format
Prizes:
Total Prize fund is ₹32000
Prize List:
| 1st | 10000 |
| 2nd | 7000 |
| 3rd | 5000 |
| 4th | 3000 |
| 5th | 2000 |
| 6th | 1000 |
| 7th | 1000 |
| 8th | 1000 |
| 9th | 1000 |
| 10th | 1000 |
Where will the tournament be held?
The event will be held in the Vishy Anand Arena in the ChessBase India room on Playchess from 7 p.m. onwards on 25th of November 2018.
Biranchi Narayan Sahoo, a businessman by profession, is the secretary of Triple C Chess Club and the main person behind this tournament. The club was founded on 2014. The club is affilated to All Odisha chess Association and they have organised various open tournaments to promote chess in Odisha.
Note: This tournament will be a single round robin event and not double. This is the statement we have received from IM Rakesh Kumar Jena, coordinator of the event:
"On behalf of Triple C Club I would like to apologize for the little mistake done by both Club and myself as the coordinator of the tournament. Somehow it slipped out from our mind that the tournament will be for more than 3 hours if it will be Double Round Robin, since it's Sunday other players will be free but still it can be a problem for other and we don't want to cause this problem on the first edition of our tournament. So we would like to change the rate of play from Double Round robin to Single Round Robin. In my knowledge other players didn't notice this too and so did I." - Rakesh Kumar Jena
