Praggnanandhaa’s promise

R PRAGGNANANDHAA, the 16-year-old chess Grandmaster from Chennai, reached an important milestone when he beat his idol Magnus Carlsen, the world champion, in the Airthings Masters, a 16-player online tournament played in the rapid format. Carlsen has the ability to grind down his opponents with relentless play, but he himself was put under intense pressure by Praggnanandhaa and made a fatal error, and the Indian GM promptly pushed him into a position of no escape. Carlsen resigned after 39 moves, and Praggnanandhaa could barely believe that he had beaten his idol.

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Defeating the Norwegian world No. 1 — that too with black pieces — is an immense confidence-booster for Praggnanandhaa, who has been marked as world champion material right from the time he became the world’s youngest International Master at age 10 in 2016. When Praggnanandhaa held Carlsen to a draw at the New in Chess Classic event last year, Carlsen had remarked: ‘He certainly did not show me too much respect when we were playing. So he clearly believes that he can compete at this level.’ Praggnanandhaa’s self-belief has never been in doubt, but his coach says the young man’s confidence has suffered during the pandemic, which had impacted the chess tournament calendar, and his performance veered between top-class and modest. The win over Carlsen has come at the right time.

Viswanathan Anand, one of the other two Indians to beat Carlsen in tournament play, has taken Praggnanandhaa under his wing, and that should do a world of good to the teenager. Anand became the first Indian GM in 1988, and since then the number of Indian GMs has swelled to 73. But no player from India has come close to matching the achievements of Anand, a five-time world champion. At 52 years of age, Anand remains the country’s top-ranked player, a position he’s held for well over three decades, with a brief interregnum. Praggnanandhaa, for all his talent and promise, is ranked No. 16 among Indian players and No. 193 in the world. But he is considered the most gifted among the teenaged Indian chess geniuses and regular exposure to the European chess circuit could help him make the leap to the top echelon of chess.