Former World champion Vishwanathan Anand has a tough field to handle in the World Rapid chess championship which gets underway in Cap D'agde, France, on Thursday.

All together 16 Grandmasters, including 11 of the 12 top-rated players, will fight it out for the crown.

The line-up is quite impressive, with the world's second highest rated player Vladimir Kramnik of Russia and Judit Polgar of Hungary figuring in the favourites list along with Anand.

The format is interesting. The players are divided into two groups of eight and they play a round-robin event between them. Four from each group will qualify for the quarter-finals, from where the tournament takes a knock-out format.

Each player will have 25 minutes on the clock at the start and 10 seconds will be added after every move is made.

This is the most acceptable time control these days in Rapid chess events. An average game will last about 50 minutes to one hour.

Generally Anand has had a gala time in tournaments this year and the trend is likely to continue in World Rapid too.

Anand's last outing in Rapid Chess was against Judit Polgar at the Chess Classic in Mainz, Germany, in August and he came from behind to score a 5-3 victory in the eight-game match - all of them decisive.

Anand is the hot favourite in his group but he is expected to face a stiff challenge from the likes of Alexei Shirov of Spain, Peter Leko of Hungary and former World champion Anatoly Karpov of Russia apart from Judit herself who had three stupendous victories against the Indian ace at Mainz.

In the other group Kramnik's main challengers will be World champion Ruslan Ponomariov of Ukraine, Boris Gelfand of Israel and Veselin Topalov of Bulgaria.

The groups:

Group A: Vladimir Kramnik (Rus), Evgeny Bareev (Rus), Veselin Topalov (Bul), Michael Adams (Eng), Ruslan Ponomariov (Ukr), Boris Gelfand (Isr), Zurab Azmaiparashvili (Geo), Etienne Bacrot (Fra).

Group B: Vishwanathan Anand (Ind), Alexei Shirov (Esp), Alexander Grischuk (Rus), Peter Svidler (Rus), Judit Polgar (Hun), Peter Leko (Hun), Anatoly Karpov (Rus), Joel Lautier (Fra).