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Barua for World Chess Championship

En Passant

With Vishy Anand opting out of the official FIDE World Chess Championships, beginning in the casino city of Las Vegas in just over a week's time, the lone Indian representative in the event will be Dibyendu Barua.

The 35-year-old Calcuttan, who caught the eye when he became an International Master in 1982 and then stunned Viktor Korchnoi while still a teenager, has since then had to take a backseat with the emergence of Anand.

Barua, who made the Championships by winning the Asian Zonal qualifying in Teheran last year, will take on Alexander Khalifman, 33, now ranked No. 45 and rated at 2628.

Curiously, Khalifman was one of the opponents Anand had beaten in the last World Championships.

Barua will clearly be the underdog in the match that takes place over two games, one each with white and black pieces for both players.

Barua, rated 2515, is more than 100 elo points below Khalifman.

All the top players, barring Anand and Kasparov, are playing the World Championships. And the list has an interesting entry in the form of Gata Kamsky, who had given up chess some two years ago and went away to pursue a degree in medicine.

Even more interesting in the match-up for the second round. The winner of the Barua-Khalifman match will clash with Kamsky.

The World Championships, under the new format, were introduced for the first time in 1997-98. Till then the World champion awaited the challenger after a long-drawn out programme which lasted three years.

But in 1997-98, under the new two-year cycle the whole World Championships was encapsulated into an event lasting about six week including the final. The final was between the winner of the qualifying tournament in Groningen, Vishy Anand, and Anatoly Karpov, who had been seeded straight into the final. A tired Anand lost to Karpov after drawing in the regulation eight-game match. In the speed chass play-off, Karpov surprised Anand, who missed more than one winning chance.

The format of giving Karpov direct seeding into a final to play a challenger who faced the very best in seven rounds earlier, came in for severe criticism. And the FIDE decided thereafter that the defending champion would be seeded only into the second round and nothing better.

So, this time Karpov gets into the second round directly, but he has a lot of complaints with the format. He is also upset at FIDE announcing that he had agreed to play. Right now a compromise is being worked out to ensure Karpov plays.

Many chess critics feel that with Kasparov and Anand opting out for their own three million dollar match-to be played sometime in October, the FIDE World Championships will not have the two best players.

In the current World Championships at Las Vegas, each match till the semi-finals will be of two games. The semis and finals will be of longer duration.

There will be 36 matches in the first round and these 36 winners will join the 28 seeded players in second round.

Karpov, the defending champion, is seeded into the second round and will play the winner of Tony Miles and Akesson. But before that, the FIDE has to soothe Karpov's hurt ego.

In recent times, Karpov has slipped down the rankings and is now only No. 10.