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CHENNAI: India's top chess players, including talented youngsters such as R Praggnanandhaa, D Gukesh, Nihal Sarin and national champion Aravindh Chithambaram will take part in the Indian Chess.com League to be played online from May 15-17.

A total of 10 teams will take part in the tournament which will see the participation of over 25 Indian Grandmasters.

GM Priyadarshan Kanappan, the league commissioner said, "The Sports League was something that I had been very familiar with as I lived in the US where you had leagues for all sports; so I always used to wonder if we could replicate that format in India, and that's how this league idea happened."

"The lockdown helped us in a big way, as chess players have no avenue to play in over the board events, so we were able to convince the top players to play in an online league format," he added.

Praggnanandhaa and Chithambaram will turn out for Team Chess Gurukul to be captained by noted coach and Grandmaster R B Ramesh, while Gukesh, the world's second youngest Grandmaster, will play for Five Fighters, which would also include the experienced GM Surya Sekhar Ganguly, promising young Leon Luke Mendonca, Vishnu Prasanna (Captain) and Soumya Swaminathan.

Karthikeyan Murali, Aditya Mittal and R Vaishali will be the other members of Team Chess Gurukul.

Sarin will be part of Superkids team to be captained by Narayanan Srinath and also includes GMs Arjun Erigaisi, Raunak Sadhwani, Srinath and Divya Deshmukh.

Indian No. 6 S P Sethuraman will also be seen in action for Chess Pathshala which includes Swapnil Deshpande (captain), Sankalp Gupta, Krishnater Kushager and Mrudul Dehankar.

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Over 25 Grandmasters to take part in Indian chess league from May 15 - Times of India