Presence of Viswanathan Anand, three players over 2700 rated and two Grandmasters as support staff has heightened expectations from the Indian contingent competing in the 43rd Chess Olympiad here.
The Indian men team will start as the fifth seed in the event which commenced here on Sunday.
Registration of 185 countries in the open and 155 in the women's section confirm that there is no other sporting event bigger than this than the FIFA world Cup. The FIDE, world chess federation, boasts off 188 countries as their affiliates.
The expectations from the Indian men are the highest even though according to Anand they have already set very high standards to improve. The Indian men without Anand and P Harikrishna, the second highest ranked Indian ever, had finished third in the Olympiad at Norway in 2014 and in 2016 they had just fallen short of the podium by finishing fourth.
"There is little place for improvement," said Anand in a recently held press conference wherein all the players agreed that this is the first time they have offered great conditions to participate in the Olympiad. What Anand probably meant was that the Indian team have to eye for nothing less than gold this time.
Harikrishna on board two, Vidit Gujrathi on three and B Adhiban and Krishnan Sasikiran handling the last board, one could not have wished for a better team from India this time.
That said, the fifth seeding means there are four teams on paper who can better the Indian men. The biggest challenge comes from the United States that will have Fabiano Caruana, Hikaru Nakamura, Wesley So and newly crowned US champion Samuel Shankland.
The 11-rounds event will see the Russians as not being the hot favourite to win the title almost ever since the inception of the Olympiad. Seeded second, the Russian men are led by Vladimir Kramnik and have the services of Russian Billionaire Andrey FIlatov working as their captain.
China is seeded third ahead of India and Ding Liren is likely to be the main stay. The fourth seeds are the Azerbaijanis who might just not go the distance.
In the women's section, the Indian think tank has again fielded the best team ever. Koneru Humpy, India's first women to attain the Grandmaster title will be the cynosure of all eyes as she comes back to the board after a gap of almost two years. Humpy, by consent, is the second best woman player in the world after Yifan Hou of China who is giving the Olympiad a skip.
While Humpy will don the first board, D Harika, Tania Sachdev, Eesha Karavade and Padmini Rout have the talent and the intention to make things fall in place. This time the newly appointed coach Jacob Aagaard also has services of two Indian Grandmasters which might just help in providing the finishing touch.
The women team is also seeded fifth and their main challenge will come from China, Russia, Ukraine and Georgia. The Indians eves had finished fifth in the last Olympiad, not delivering the needful in absence of Humpy.
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