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PUNE: GM Surya Shekhar Ganguly is impressed by the quality of India players rated between 1800 and 2000. Still, the six-time national champion is not happy about the championship losing its premier status. There has to be some qualifying path for the Nationals, said Ganguly. It can be a combination of all titled players plus state entries via qualifying and donor entries with a minimum rating of Elo 2200 or so. We cant have a diluted field. The All India Chess Federation (AICF) made the national tournament open, meaning anybody could play it by paying a donor entry of Rs 12,500. It resulted in the championship having an average rating of 1726, almost 500 points lower than the original minimum FIDE rating. No. 3 seed SP Sethuraman won the title with a 14-move draw (another climax-related issue with Swiss League format) in the last round with Mitrabha Guha. None of the players in the meet attained any norm. Average rating of opponents was that bad. But it was expected once 300-plus entries for an 11-round event were taken when only 100 entries may have given fair final standings and better matchups. We have to attract top guys in this championship, said 40-year-old Ganguly, who played the tournament for the first time since 2008 because he knew there was no pressure on him to win it. Give better conditions and increase prize money for the Nationals and higher rated players would turn up. The current prize for the winner is Rs 6 lakh. But it could not attract any of the top-11 and 17 of top 20 players in India. The progress of Indian chess (five players rated Elo 2700-plus, 80-plus Grandmasters) is way faster than its organisational growth. Organizers are consistently dependent on government funding and some big-hearted patrons. Chess being not spectator friendly sport is cited as one reason for not having the financial bandwidth to conduct national championship with elite India players. With chess stakeholders being inactive spectators, the decline of the national championship from being an elite round-robin event to being just a practice tournament (with bigger government grants) is now complete.

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GM Surya Shekhar Ganguly unhappy with weak National Championship - IndiaTimes