Praggnanandhaa Erigaisi Vaishali face stern test at chess tour pilot

Budapest, Nov 9 (PTI) The Indian trio of R Praggnanandhaa, Arjun Erigaisi and R Vaishali faces a stern test in a star-studded field led by World No. 1 Magnus Carlsen at the Total Chess World Championship Tour pilot, which begins here on Tuesday.

     The event will test players across Fast Classic, rapid and blitz formats.

     Praggnanandhaa, who became the first Indian to win both Norway Chess and the Grand Chess Tour title earlier this year, will be among the leading Indian contenders.

     The World No. 7 Indian defeated American Fabiano Caruana 15-13 in the Grand Chess Tour final in St Louis, overturning a six-point deficit on the final day after winning both rapid games before holding his nerve in blitz.

     He also finished runner-up at the Clutch Chess Champions Showdown in October, behind Uzbekistan's Javokhir Sindarov.

     The tournament's mix of time controls will test the players' ability to adapt across formats.

     World No. 12 Erigaisi, meanwhile, comes into the event after a consistent run in recent months. The 23-year-old was part of India's silver-medal-winning team at the Chess Olympiad in Samarkand.

     Known for his aggressive playing style, Erigaisi subsequently represented Alkaloid at the European Club Cup in Montenegro, finishing with five points from seven games, including three wins and four draws.

     Vaishali, one of only two women in the 24-player field, won the Women's Candidates Tournament in April to earn the right to challenge China's Ju Wenjun for the world title.

     She will compete against a field that includes some of the world's leading players across all three formats.

     The Indian trio will face a field led by five-time world champion Carlsen. American Grandmaster Fabiano Caruana, Wesley So, Uzbekistan's Nodirbek Abdusattorov, France's Alireza Firouzja, Vincent Keymer, Ian Nepomniachtchi and Anish Giri are among the other prominent names in the 24-player line-up.

     Unique Format

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     The tournament, conceptualised by Norway Chess and approved by the International Chess Federation (FIDE), is designed to identify the most complete player by combining three disciplines -- Fast Classic, rapid and blitz -- under one championship.

     It will serve as a test run before the full global season launches next year.

     The action will begin with a nine-round Blitz Swiss, played with a time control of 3 minutes plus a 2-second increment per move (3+2), which will determine tie-break rankings for the group stage and seedings for the knockout rounds.

     The 24 players will then be divided into four groups of six. Each group will follow a double round-robin format, meaning that every player will face all five opponents twice.

     The group stage will last five days, with players competing in Fast Classic games (45 minutes plus a 30-second increment per move).

     A win will be worth 3 points, while a draw will earn each player 1 point.

     Once the group stage is over, the players will move on to the knockout phase. Based on their group-stage results, they will be placed into six different brackets, with head-to-head matches determining who advances.

     Each knockout match will be played over two days and will feature all three time controls: Four Blitz games (3+2), two Rapid games (15+10), one Fast Classic game (45+30).

     Players will have to demonstrate their skills across all three formats, switching between fast tactical battles and longer games that require deeper calculation.

     If a match is still tied after the scheduled games, an Armageddon game on the second day will decide the winner.

     All these stages will eventually lead to the decisive knockout matches on November 19 and 20, when the winners of the different brackets will be crowned.

     The winner of the top bracket, Knockout 1, will take the overall Budapest pilot title.

(This story has not been edited by THE WEEK and is auto-generated from PTI)