Aravindh wins Prague Masters

India's dominance in chess continued unabated with Grandmaster Aravindh Chithambaram winning the first major title of his career after finishing ahead of established names including compatriot R Praggnanandhaa at the Prague Masters tournament here on Friday.

The 25-year-old Aravindh ended the tournament with six points after settling for a draw with Gurel Ediz of Turkey in the ninth and final round. World No. 8 Praggnanandhaa finished tied-second with five points after losing to Dutchman Anish Giri.

In the penultimate round, Aravindh had played out an easy draw with David Navara of Czech Republic, while Praggnanandhaa drew with Vietnam's Quang Liem Le.

Tamil Nadu's Aravindh ended with three victories and six draws in the tournament. Praggnanandhaa concluded his campaign on five points along with Giri and top seed Wei Yi of China.

Aravindh chose the solid Caro Kann to counter Ediz's King pawn and the Turkish youngster went for the Advance variation. Aravindh had to part with a pawn early in the opening but the complications remained as white had a fractured king side and the extra pawn on the other flank was not of much use.

The players repeated several times during the first time control and Ediz realised that it was not so easy to force matters. "I have not slept well in the last two days, I was completely fine till the seventh round and then I got this lead and there was pressure," Aravindh said.

The champion also praised his mentor and coach Grandmaster RB Ramesh and singled out his game against Giri as his best effort in the tournament.

Praggnanandhaa took his chances as he knew he needed to win in order to catch up with his state-mate. It was a King's Indian defence that met with a usual response from Giri, and Praggnanandhaa could not really get the complexities running.

Giri, to his credit, calculated quite well when the position demanded and won a rook for a minor piece to reach a winning position. The Dutch GM did not make any mistakes thereafter.

In other games of the final round, Navara drew with American Sam Shankland, while another local hero Nguyen Thai Dai Van was denied victory by Vincent Keymer of Germany.

Divya Deshmukh turned things around as she won her final round game against Stamatis Kourkoulous-Arditis of Greece in the Challengers' section.

Pranav wins World Junior Chess C’ship

New Delhi: India's Pranav Venkatesh won the World Junior Chess Championship (Under-20) after settling for a draw against Matic Levrencic of Slovenia in the 11th and final round in Petrovac, Montenegro, on Friday. Venkatesh, who had won the challengers section in the Chennai International last year, remained undefeated during the course of the event. The Indian scored a total of seven victories and four draws to end up on nine points out of a possible 11. Venkatesh is a trainee at Viswanathan Anand's academy. Anand had won the event in 1987. Thereafter, P Harikrishna won in 2004 and Abhijeet Gupta had followed suit in 2008. Divya Deshmukh had won the women's event in 2024. Before Divya, Soumya Swaminathan won in 2009, D Harika in 2008 and Koneru Humpy in 2001.