PTI 

Dubai, Apr 23: Grandmaster Koneru Humpy was to spearhead the Indian challenge in Dubai International open chess tournament that gets underway here on Sunday.

Besides Humpy, Grandmaster duo of R B Ramesh and Tejas Bakre are also in the fray, apart from quite a few other Indians.

GM Jaan Ehlvest of Estonia starts as the top seed in this strongest Asian open that has a total prize pool of USD 45000.

Humpy, who is now eyeing the second highest ever spot by a women player in the history of the game, will be looking forward to give the higher ranked players a run for their money. The Hyderabad-based player is already the second ranked women in the world on 2575 ELO points behind Judit Polgar of Hungary but to become the second highest rank women ever, she has to add atleast three more rating points from this event to eclipse the last rating of Susan Polgar, who lives in United States.

R B Ramesh had some fine success in the last year's event and he would be looking for an encore. The Indian GM recently went through a slump that witnessed some decline Indian ranking and would like to set the records right.

Tejas Bakre has not been playing much in India and had a modest result in his last open event in Australia. The Gujarat-based player will have to negotiate a tough field here to be in with a chances.

Among the norm hopefuls, S P Sethuraman and Woman Grandmaster Dronavalli Harika will be hoping for a good time here, while the likes of Aditya Udeshi would hope to cause a few upsets.

Two former world champions from India , N Srinath and Sahaj Grover, are also in the tournament.