R Praggnanandhaa has found himself grouped with World No.1 Magnus Carlsen in the same group, while Arjun Erigaisi and Vidit Gujrathi were put together in another pool for the 16-player Freestyle chess tournament in Las Vegas. World Champion D Gukesh will miss the tournament.

Carlsen will once again start as the favourite for the tournament that will start late on Wednesday. The tournament saw a lot of pre-event activities that included the participation of NBA players. The 16-player Freestyle Chess event in Las Vegas carries a total prize pool of 750,000 US dollars with the winner taking home 200,000. Each group has eight players in the line up and the top four will progress to the next round while the bottom half will play against each other.

Gukesh misses the tournament

Gukesh is missing the tournament as he will be playing the main event of the Grandmaster tour in about a month’s time. Praggnanandhaa will start his campaign against Nodirbek Abdusattorov of Uzbekistan, a player who has been struggling at the previous edition of Grand Chess tour in Zagreb, Croatia.

Carlsen will start the tournament against the winner of the first edition, Vincent Keymer of Germany, in his opening round. Erigaisi will be facing American Hans Nieman, who is making his debut in the Freestyle chess tournament, in his opening match.

Gujrathi will face a big test against Fabiano Caruana of the United States in his opener. In a first, woman player Bibisara Assaubuyeva of Kazakhstan has been included in the lineup to take on the world’s elite. Freestyle chess is the name given to Fischer random chess or chess 960, where the position of the pieces is randomly changed before the game starts.

This version of chess has been gaining popularity as tame draws have been eliminated with the matches being more challenging from the get-go.

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