Arun Prasad GM No.18 For India
By Arvind Aaron
S. Arun Prasad of Salem who is employed with Bharat Petroleum, Chennai is
India's eighteenth grand master. He reached the 2500 rating mark during
the Philadelphia Open last month.
Other grandmasters are from India are: V. Anand, Tejas Bakre, D. Barua,
Deepan Chakkaravarthy, S.S. Ganguly, G.N. Gopal, Abhijeet Gupta, P.
Harikrishna, Koneru Humpy, Abhijit Kunte, Neelotpal Das, P. Negi, P.
Magesh Chandran, R.B. Ramesh, Sandipan Chanda, K. Sasikiran, P.M. Thipsay.
India has 57 International Masters, five Woman Grand Masters, 19 Woman
International Masters as per the July 2008 rating list of FIDE. The WGMs
listed are low since many of them like Humpy are listed as men GM,
Vijayalakshmi, Harika, Tania Sachdev are listed as IM.
In the FIDE rating list file India has 8642 players as per the July 2008
rating list. Leading chessplaying nations are: France 18996, Spain 17672,
Germany has 16527, Russia 13734. Prominent Asian countries: Iran 2095,
Australia 1049, Philippines 691, China 532, Kazakhstan 502. Prominent
English speaking countries: USA 4027, England 1827, Canada 986.
India has other Grand Masters in waiting like G.B. Prakash. He had made
five GM norms and is waiting for the 2500 rating requirement. He was
listed as a GM recently in June and it was soon corrected!
India is fertile for chess and these 8642 players in the file go to prove
it. All Indian Chess Federation (AICF) is making things easier for the
players to achieve. The men and women teams go for Chess Olympiads from
1980 regularly. Now, from 2006 Juniors, from 2008 Sub-Juniors play in
overseas events at USA and Spain regularly and make norms and titles.
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Published on
04th July,
2008
