The Hindu : Sport / Chess : Hari, Humpy, Negi carry Indian hopes

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Friday, Oct 27, 2006
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Hari, Humpy, Negi carry Indian hopes

NEW DELHI: Former World junior champion P. Hari Krishna, former World junior girls' champion K. Humpy and currently the World's youngest Grandmaster Parimarjan Negi will take on some of the more illustrious names in the seventh Cap d'Adge Masters rapid chess tournament that starts at Cap d'Agde, France, on Friday.

Sixteen invited players have been divided into two groups of eight each. After the league, the top four players from each group will move into the knock-out stage.

Hari, the fourth strongest player in the field and second in the eight-player Group `A', along with Negi, the lowest ranked among the 10 men in the fray, will face top seed Teimour Radjabov, World's youngest ever GM Ukraine's Sergey Karjakin, Russian Alexandra Kosteniuk and former women's World champion Bulgaria's Antoneta Stefanova, among others, for a place in the quarterfinals.

Humpy, the strongest among the six women, will be up against Frenchman Etienne Bacrot and Norway's Magnus Carlsen, seeded two and three respectively, former World champion Anatoly Karpov and Ukraine's rising star Andrei Volokitin, among others, in the league.

The champion will get 16,000 euros, the runner-up 8,000 euros, losing semifinalists 4,000 euros each, losing quarterfinalists 2,000 euros each and the non-qualifiers from the league 1,000 euros each.

The groupings:

Group `A': Teimour Radjabov (Aze, 2729), P. Hari Krishna (Ind, 2674), Sergey Karjakin (Ukr, 2672), Laurent Fressinet (Fra, 2640), Parimarjan Negi (Ind, 2538), Alexandra Kosteniuk (Rus, 2534), Antoaneta Stefanova (Bul, 2489), Marie Sebag (Fra, 2471).

Group `B': Etienne Bacrot (Fra, 2705), Magnus Carlsen (Nor, 2698), Anatoly Karpov (Rus, 2668), Andrei Volokitin (Ukr, 2645), Maxime Vachier-Lagrave (Fra, 2579), K. Humpy (Ind, 2545), Zhao Xue (Chn, 2467), Almira Skripchenko (Fra, 2427).

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