40 teams have been selected for fide online Olympiad 2020. There are 4 pools A, B, C, and D. India is placed in pool A with 9 other countries. Other countries are Magnolia, Georgia, Germany, China, Zimbabwe, Uzbekistan, Iran, Indonesia, Vietnam. The top seed in group A is of course China. To qualify, India should finish in the top 3 and comparatively its easy task for team India. India has 3 players above 2700 in the team i.e. Vishy Anand, Vidit Gujrathi, P. Harikrishna. Team India will lead by GM Vidit Gujrathi as a captain. Vishy is not captain because he can concentrate on the game.
The Team India rating average is 2419. Due to Rapid rating is considered many players are very much underrated. For eg Praggnanandhaa R who has a classical fide rating of 2600, but in rapid format, his rating is just 1781. Indian women team is strong and composed of 2 GM i.e. Harika Dronavali and Hampy Koneru. Humpy is played excellent last year that’s why we have big hope from Humpy.
Indian Team
Indian team consists of 6 men and 6 women players. In Team India a total of 8 GMs, 1 IM, 2 WIM, and 1 WGM playing. Let’s see all players
Harikrishna Pentala
Vidit Gujrathi
Nihal Sarin
Arvindh Chithambaram VR
Praggananandhaa R
Koneru Humpy
Harika Dronavali
IM Kulkarni Bhakti
WGM Vaishali R
WIM Divya Deshmukh
WGM Vantika Agarwal
Parings and Schedule
In following, image full details about Indian team are covered
Opposition and the best bet
India will compete with 9 more teams in division A. Only china is a proper competition to India. Other teams are also strong but not big rivals. Vietnam, Iran, Uzbekistan, Germany will fight each other for 3rd place. Indian men’s team is powerful especially GM Nihal Sarin who is a monster when we see him playing blitz and bullet on chess.com. Nihal has beaten even World Champion Magnus Carlsen on chess24.com. On the other hand the Indian women team is missing some experienced players like Soumya Swaminathan, Tania Sachdeva, etc. overall In my opinion India has huge chances to win this section A.
Stay tuned for our next fide online olympiad report.