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KOLKATA: India's tryst with major global chess event proved to be short-lived as the Grand Chess Tour (GCT) has decided to skip Kolkata as a venue for one of its legs this season.

The city had the honour of becoming the first in Asia to host a segment of the GCT rapid and blitz meet at Bhasha Bhawan of the iconic National Library last November. It was the biggest chess event to visit the Indian shores and saw eight of the top 15 Grandmasters participating.

Near packed house on all the five playing days left the organisers extremely happy and they expressed desire to make Kolkata a permanent stop for the Tour.

However, much to the dismay of chess lovers of India, the GCT calendar this year does not feature Kolkata.

The sixth edition of the GCT will see a truncated edition with five legs instead of eight that were played last year.

While the number of full tour participants was 12 in the last edition, it has come down to 10 this time. Not only will there be no Indian cities as venue, none of the country's players have found place on the roster. Last time, India No. 1 Viswanathan Anand was one of the prominent faces in the GCT. Apart from him, India's Pentala Harikrishna and Vidit Gujrathi were given wildcards for the Kolkata leg.

While the fifth edition of the GCT featured three classical and five rapid and blitz meets, this edition will see two classical and three rapid and blitz events.

"The main reason for curtailing the number of tour events this year was scheduling," GCT technical director Graham Jurgensen told TOI.

"The Chess Olympiad takes place for most of August while the World Championship event takes place for almost the entire month of November," he stated. "The combination and importance of these two events coupled with the impact on the St Louis events made it difficult for us to schedule additional GCT events in the last three months of the year," he explained.

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Kolkata out of GCT calendar this year - Times of India