The Tata Steel Chess India — Rapid & Blitz 2021 begins on November 17 and the tournament’s ambassador, five-time world champion Viswanathan Anand, has promised to be “all over the place”.

Anand, who is with the meet from the planning stage itself, will be mentoring some of the Indian young Grandmasters, may do some commentary and also interact with the audience and try to explain to them what’s going on.

“I will obviously interact with some of the youngsters before and during the tournament to motivate themselves. But I am not going to call them every morning to discuss games. That may look like intruding into their mental space. Hopefully, before the tournament starts I will give them a few suggestions. The itch to play will be there and recently I am dabbling a bit with commentary and find that enjoyable too. Here also, I may interact with the audience and try to explain to them what’s going on. Actually I will be all over the place.”

Anand will fly to Dubai after the tournament to do commentary for the Fide World Chess Championship match between Magnus Carlsen and Ian Nepomniachtchi from November 24.

Top players like Levon Aronian, Le Quang Liem, Sam Shankland, Parham Maghsoodloo will be seen in action in Calcutta along with a glut of talented Indian players during the five-day meet.

“I have played here in two editions, in 2018 and 2019. Now I am happy to play the role of an ambassador. India has a huge pool of young chess players but they need to get more exposure and play against the world’s best.

“This event serves that purpose. We will have players of the calibre of Aronian, Liem (who had played in Calcutta as a junior in 2003), Shankland and Maghsoodloo,” Anand said at the virtual news conference on Saturday.

Two Indian participants will play both the rapid and blitz events. One is Vidit Gujrathi and the other soon-to-be-married Adhiban Baskaran. R. Praggnanandhaa, Karthikeyan Murali and R. Vaishali will be playing only the rapid event. Vaishali is one the students in Westbridge Anand Chess Academy.

Players like Dronavalli Harika, Nihal Sarin, Dommraju Gukesh and Raunak Sadhwani will be playing the blitz section.

“The most interesting tournaments to me are when the field is mixed. So this tournament promises to be an exciting one,” Anand added.

A rating tournament also will be held and one for the amateur players.

The draw will be done on November 16 in the presence of Anand. The tournament will be played at the National Library and offers a total prize money of over $40,000.

The tournament was postponed last year because of the pandemic.

“We will ensure all Covid-19 protocols are maintained. We are happy to organise a physical chess event after the almost exclusively virtual life we have been living,”Jeet Banerjee, director of local organiser Gameplan, said.

Chanakya Chaudhary, vice-president, corporate services, Tata Steel, also attended the news conference.