Tata Steel India Rapid and Blitz begins – with Carlsen and Keymer

11/12/2024 – Tata Steel, sponsor of the traditional chess tournament in Wijk aan Zee, has also been organising a top-level tournament in India every year since 2018, a rapid and blitz event. It starts again on Wednesday, with Magnus Carlsen and Vincent Keymer, among others.

Since 2018, the Indian company Tata Steel has also been organising an absolute top event in India, a combined rapid and blitz tournament, each with an open tournament and a women’s tournament with ten players.

India is now the undisputed chess superpower, as winning gold in the Open section and in the Women’s Tournament at the Chess Olympiad in Budapest amply demonstrated. While the women’s team benefited from the fact that China did not field its top stars and instead sent a young team, the Indian men’s team was the clear favourite.

At Tata Steel India, five top Indian men and five top Indian women will now face off against five top international men and five top international women.

The German chess community is delighted that Vincent Keymer, the best German player, has also been invited. The fourth-ranked junior in the world will take on the two players ahead of him in the rankings, Nodirbek Abdusattorov and Praggnanandhaa. Gukesh, the world’s number one U-20 junior, will not be competing as he will soon be competing against Ding Liren for the World Championship in Singapore. However, Nihal Sarin, another young Indian grandmaster, will be playing. Arjun Erigaisi, 21, has just outgrown the junior category. Daniil Dubov, Vidit Gujrathi and S L Narayanan are already a little older, and Wesley So and Magnus Carlsen are effectively the seniors in this field.

The women’s field is not quite as young. Divya Deshmukh, Vantikai Agrawal and Vaishali are still young players, but Koneru Humpy and Harika Dronavalli have been active for quite some time. Aleksandra Goryachkina is the youngest of the international players, while Kateryna Lagno, Alexsandra Kosteniuk, Nana Dzagnidze and Valentina Gunina are also experienced players.

On Monday, some of the players showed off their skills at simultaneous exhibitions and promoted the chess tournament.