CHESS#1319

The World Juniors turned into a triumph for Parham Maghsoodloo who won with 9.5 points from 11 and an Elo 2800-plus performance

The Indian teams left for the Batumi Olympiad with high hopes. The return of Viswanathan Anand and Humpy Koneru to the teams after a long gap, and the return of Pentala Harikrishna after a shorter gap, adds firepower. In addition, there are top-class coaches in Ramachandran Ramesh (Open) and Jacob Aagaard (Women’s) and the luggage includes high-end servers to help with analysis. 

The class of the “returnees” is unquestioned. But there could be questions about form. Anand’s form has been so-so in his last two classical events. Koneru has taken a two-year break from chess and she’s obviously likely to