CHENNAI: AFTER winning the St. Louis Rapid and Blitz — which took him to second place in the overall Grand Chess Tour rankings, Grand Master R Praggnanandhaa will hope to continue his good run in the Sinquefield Cup. He is set to face Samuel Sevian, who comes in after Alireza Firouzja decided to withdraw from the tour. All nine regular tour players will be back in the Sinquefield Cup, making it one of the strongest tournaments of the year, alongside the Norway Chess Classic, which was also won by Praggnanandhaa.
Fabio Caruana starts as the favourite yet again, as classical chess is his forte, while fellow Americans, Wesley So and Levon Aronian, will also be among the contenders for a podium finish. Add to that, World Championship contender Javokhir Sindarov of Uzbekistan, Vincent Keymer of Germany, Anish Giri of the Netherlands and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave of France, and it becomes an extremely formidable field.
The tournament will be played over nine rounds between 10 players on a round-robin basis, with a total prize pool of USD 475,000. Praggnanandhaa will have five Black games out of a possible nine and will look to make the most of his four games with the White pieces. Pairings - Round 1: Savian Samuels (USA) vs R Praggnanandhaa (Ind); Javokhir SIndarov (Uzb) vs Levon Aronian (Arm); Vincent Keymer (Ger) vs Wesley So (USA); Fabiano Caruana (USA) vs Jorden Van Foreest (Ned); 8. Anish Giri (Ned) vs Maxime Vachier-Lagrave (Fra).