Chess
Asian Chess C'ships: Nihal Sarin in focus with World Cup spots up for grabs – Preview
All you need to know about the 2025 Asian Chess Championships.
Nihal Sarin (Photo credit: Romanian Chess Federation)
India's Nihal Sarin will start as the top seed at the 2025 Asian Individual Chess Championships slated to begin on Wednesday in Al Ain, United Arab Emirates.
The 20-year-old Nihal, who has been in good form off late having won the Tashkent Open is March, is the highest rated player in open section at 2693.
A total of 35 Indians will be in action in the 158-player field in the open section, including the likes of recently crowned world junior champion Pranav Venkatesh, the experienced Surya Ganguly, B Adhiban, SP Sethuraman and others.
Meanwhile in the women's section, IM Vantika Agrawal is the highest rated Indian. She is the seventh seed overall with a rating of 2377.
Though the defending champion Divya Deshmukh will be missing in action, India will field a total of 19 women in the competition.
What's at stake?
The 2025 Asian Individual Chess Championships has the 2025 Chess World Cup spots on offer.
The top ten players from the open section will qualify for the 2025 Chess World Cup and the top two players from the women's section will qualify for the 2025 Women's Chess World Cup.
Format
The 2025 Asian Individual Chess Championships will be conducted in the Swiss format with nine rounds. The time control will be 90 minutes for the first 40 moves followed by 30 minutes for rest of the game. There will be an increment of 30 seconds for every move made.
Indians in action
Open: Nihal Sarin, Karthikeyan Murali, Leon Mendonca, Abhimanyu Puranik, Pranav Venkatesh, SL Narayanan, Abhijeet Gupta, M Pranesh, P Iniyan, Surya Ganguly, Karthik Venkataramanan, Sankalp Gupta, Bharath Subramaniyam, Pranav Anand, SP Sethuraman, Aditya Mittal, Raja Rithvik, Adhiban Baskaran, S Aswath, Al Muthaiah, Ayush Sharma, Prraneeth Vuppala, AR Ilamprathi, LR Srihari, Neelash Saha, UK Harshvardhan, Mayank Chakraborty, Ameya Audi, Aradhya Garg, Sambit Panda, Ritviz Parab, K Maran Senthil, Prathmesh Sunil Mokal, Akshat Khamparia, Krishnan Saravana
Women: Vantika Agrawal, PV Nandhidhaa, Padmini Rout, Rakshitta Ravi, Savitha Shri, Priyanka Nuttaki, Mary Ann Gomes, Srija Seshadri, Sakshi Chitlange, Arshiya, Nisha Mohota, Vishwa Vasanwala, Priyanka k, Swati Ghate, Kiran Manisha Mohanty, Arya Mallar, HG Pragnya, Anaya Raman, R Sananda
Schedule
7th May - 1st Round
8th May - 2nd Round
9th May - 3rd Round
10th May - 4th Round
11th May - 5th Round
12th May - 6th Round
13th May - 7th Round
14th May - 8th Round
15th May - 9th Round
