Young Indian Grandmaster chess player R.Praggnanandhaa produced a superb performance, winning three straight games including two in the blitz tie-breaks to outwit World No.1 Magnus Carlsen 4-2 in the final round of the FTX Crypto Cup here on Monday 22nd August in Miami. Despite the win over World no. 1 Carlsen, the 17-year old could only take second place in the final standings of the tournament. The Norwegian won the top prize on the basis of the higher score made. He finished with 16 match points to the Indian prodigy’s tally being 15, just one in comparison to the first place.
Alireza Firouzja, another highly-rated teen chess player and a prodigy too, also finished on 15 points but had to settle for third place as he had lost the clash against Praggnanandhaa earlier in the tournament.
The first two games of the Carlsen and Praggnanandhaa match were drawn before the World No.1 went ahead by clinching the third game. In a sudden turn of events, the Indian child prodigy won the fourth game to push the match into the tie-breaks. The Indian shocked the Norwegian by winning both the games in the tie-break rounds. R. Pragg and Carlsen were neck-and-neck throughout the whole tournament with the youngster putting in some real statement performance throughout.
With a second-place position holding, R.Praggnanandhaa takes home $37,000 as prize money. But more importantly, he now has three big wins over Magnus Carlsen in the last six months alone. It was evident in the tournament that the 31-year-old was lacking the motivation to go all out once the win was secured in the third round. Both players were in fact, short of motivation once Carlsen won round 3. With not much left to play for, experiments started to take place in the game. 16…b5 step taken by Carlsen in the fourth game was one of those moves that was more a fun attempt by Carlsen to put Prag under pressure in the event. The eight-player all-play-all tournament was the American finale of the Champions Chess Tour and each match was played over four rapid games, with blitz tiebreaks in case of a 2-2 draw situation.
Praggnanandhaa started his campaign in the tournament held with victory over World No.4 Firouzja and also scored wins over players like Anish Giri and Levon Aronian. The Indian child prodigy has been in splendid form from the very beginning of this year and had previously beaten the world champion twice in online events. He also played an important role in the Indian ‘B’ team claiming a bronze medal and a bronze individually recently in the 44th chess Olympiad held in Malappuram, Chennai.
Later, talking about the game the grandmaster Praggnanandhaa said that Carlsen’s experiment of 16….b5 was unnecessary and more of a fun. Carlsen might have tried this move to put me under pressure Or to beat me.
He also said he was happy with his overall game.
