Surya Shekhar Ganguly is an Indian chess grandmaster, 2009 Asian champion and six-time Indian champion. Ganguly became an International Master at 16 and a Grandmaster at 19 and has also won the 2019 Belt and Road Hunan open International tournament in China.
The Belt and Road Hunan Open 2019 in China, held from July 29th to August 6th 2019. The one thing that made this tournament absolutely unique was the prize fund. The first prize was a whopping USD $50,000. With such high prize money at stake, the tournament was bound to get strong players participating. The organizers decided to implement a rating cut off of 2400 and above (there were also B and C category tournaments) and drew 73 players from 15 countries to take part in the A-category event, which included 43 grandmasters. Of those, 24 were above an Elo of 2600 and the top seed was Wei Yi (2737).
Other 2700+ players included Yu Yangyi, Wang Hao, Le Quang Liem, Bassem Amin and Maxim Matlakov. The tournament, however, was won by the 15th seeded Indian GM Surya Sekhar Ganguly with 7 points from 9 games to bag $50,000. His wins included one incredible 16-mover against Wei Yi. Yu Yangyi and Amin Bassem (both 6.5) tied for second-third. Surya Shekhar Ganguly performance rating was an amazing 2876 Elo, with a gain of 27-28 Elo, from a baseline rating of 2638. In other good news, the World Cup will have a contingent of 11 Indians in the field of 128.
