Surya Sekhar Ganguly will face Hikaru Nakamura in opener

Khanty-Mansiysk (Russia): National champion Surya Sekhar Ganguly will take on one of the toughest rival in Grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura of the US as the Indian trio, including P. Harikrishna and Krishnan Sasikiran, begin their challenge in Chess World Cup here.

GM Harikrishna, the highest rated Indian in the fray in the expected absence of Viswanathan Anand, will face Chinese Yu Shaoteng in the opening round of the event to be played on a knock-out basis till the third round.

Other Indian GM Krishnan Sasikiran has been pitted against Russian GM Alexei Iljushin.

While Nakamura is known as one of the fiercest fighters these days and is famous for springing out surprise moves in the very early stage of the game, Iljushin has a penchant for positional chess.

Harikrishna has a relatively weaker opponent in Shaoteng who is another part of the upcoming Chinese chess brigade.

There are 128 participants in all and the knockout will be held until there are 16 remaining in the Cup. Thereafter, it will be a decider for the top 16 places with each passing round.

The event will be held with Fide’s time control of 40 moves for 90 minutes followed by all the moves in 15 minutes. There will be a 30 seconds increment from move one.

There will be two games under normal time control in each round and thereafter tiebreak games of shorter duration will come in to effect to decide the winner.

“I know I am no longer the World Junior champion, but in any case I could not have played it always. Shakhriyar won it for the second time and that is really commendable, but I doubt anyone ever played it again after winning it once apart from him,” Harikrishna said.

Speaking about his preparation, the Indian was polite and confident at the same time. “I did a lot of general preparation before the event with my current trainer Elibjar Ubilava, things look fine for me but the weather not,” Harikrishna said pointing at the extreme cold conditions outside the venue.