It is again a star-studded field sans World Champion Magnus Carlsen of Norway who decided to skip the last two events of the tour in lieu of the impending World championship match against Sergey Karjakin of Russia later this year.
Anand starts as the sixth seed in the 10-player round robin contest that will have nine rounds in all. The time control is 120 minutes for the first 40 moves and one hour for the rest of the game with an additional 30 seconds added to the clock from move 41.
In-form Maxime Vachier-Lagrave of France who recently climbed to a career best number two world ranking starts as the rating favourite in the event ahead of Caruana, who is world number four.
Seven out of 10 top ranked players in the world are taking part including defending champion Levon Aronian of Armenia.
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After finishing fourth in the previous edition of the GCT at Leuven in Belgium, Anand currently stands at seventh spot on the tour and will have to do well both here and at the final leg in London later this year to be in contention for a podium finish.
The Indian had to miss out on the first tournament of GCT this year in Paris due to prior commitments.
Anand picked out a good draw and the Indian ace will get to play five white games out of a possible nine here. However, to make it an even playing field for the tour, the organisers put up a new rule that states that in the forthcoming London Classic, the players playing five white games here will play five blacks.
The first edition was won by Nakamura, while world champion Carlsen had sealed the second event with some authority.
Pairings round 1: V Anand (Ind) vs Fabiano Caruana (Usa); Wesley So (Usa) vs Hikaru Nakamura (Usa); Anish Giri (Ned) vs Maxime Vachier-Lagrave (Fra); Ding Liren (Chn) vs Levon Aronian (Arm); Veselin Topalov (Bul) vs Peter Svidler (Rus).