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Saturday, Feb 10, 2007
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National Team Championship from Sunday

Arvind Aaron

Chennai: A sharp upswing of entries awaits the National Cities Team Chess Championship that will be held by the T. Nagar Chess Academy in Chennai's Hall of Chess from February 11 to 15.

Around 30 to 35 teams with 150 to 165 players are expected to play in this eight-round Swiss format event, said D.V. Sundar, the Honorary Secretary of the All India Chess Federation — a huge increase over the eight teams that played at Vijayawada in 2003.

The National Cities Championship carries a prize fund of Rs. 60,000 and it is sponsored by the Shipping Corporation of India. The top two teams will represent India in the Asian Cities Team Championship to be held at Tehran, Iran, from March 1 to 9.

"Fifteen of the 30 participating teams are from Chennai," said V. Ravichandran, who will be the chief arbiter.

The 2003 National champion, Kancheepuram, played in the Asian Cities at Manila in 2004 and finished 18th among 40 teams. This time, scores of Chennai teams with International Masters are in the fray. The top-seeded Chennai `A' will have IMs R.R. Laxman and R. Balasubramaniam, besides Ram S. Krishnan and Praveen Kumar. Chennai `B' or `C' will comprise Indian Bank players, IMs G.B. Prakash, N. Sudhakar Babu and others.

The favourites will be the top Chennai teams though there are teams from Kozhikode, Bangalore (three teams), Kadapa (two teams), Hyderabad, Mumbai, Jammu, Kolkata and Delhi.

Chennai had previously staged this event in 1993.

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