Praggnanandhaa has now beaten the World No.1 (Magnus Carlsen) and World No.2 in the same event in the classical format. (Norway Chess/Stev Bonhage)
On a significant day for Indian chess, Praggnanandhaa took down World No.2 Fabiano Caruana in Round 5 of Norway Chess. The result means that he has now beaten the World No.1 (Magnus Carlsen) and World No.2 in the same event in the classical format. Praggnanandhaa had also gone on a similar giant-killing spree at the FIDE World Cup last year, where he had defeated Caruana and World No.3 Hikaru Nakamura to enter the final, where Carlsen had managed to overpower him in tiebreaks.
The result also meant that India now have three players in the top 10 in the FIDE live ratings, none of whom are named Viswanathan Anand. Anand is World No. 11 in the live ratings, while Arjun Erigaisi is the top-ranked Indian in the FIDE live ratings at No.5, with World Championship challenger Gukesh at No.7 while Praggnanandhaa takes the 10th position. It must be noted that FIDE releases its published ratings at the start of every month and live ratings are calculated on a real-time basis so there is fluctuation in ranks sometimes on a daily basis if tournaments are running.
While Gukesh and Praggnanandhaa have made plenty of headlines back home in India, in chess circles, Erigaisi is also making a name for himself with his game play.
Before the Norway Chess tournament started, Carlsen in an interview with The Indian Express had broken down the difference between the three Indian youngsters, who are largely thought of as the present and future of Indian chess: “Gukesh is a very calculation-based player. Pragg also calculates well but he’s a little more intuitive. He’s more of a player, in the sense that he’s more of a gamer. Arjun is just a complete mad man at the board. He wants to kill you in every single game. Has crazy preparation and plays extremely ambitiously and that’s what makes him very dangerous.”
The defeat to Praggnanandhaa at Norway Chess also pushed USA’s Caruana to World No.3 while compatriot Nakamura rose to No.2. Nakamura had managed to defeat Praggnanandhaa in a previous round and holds on to the top spot in the open tournament standings at Norway Chess.
“The game was good. It’s not easy to outplay such a strong opponent in these kinds of endgames where there is just a very slight advantage. So I’m very happy with the result,” Praggnanandhaa told Norway’s TV2 after the game.
HE IS BACK 🔥🔥 #NorwayChess pic.twitter.com/2FyT8rChQU
— Norway Chess (@NorwayChess) June 2, 2024
Caruana mistake against Pragg proves costly
While the game seemed to be idling towards a draw, Caruana blundered on move 66 when his king came under check from Pragg’s advancing knight. Instead of moving the king to f7, he shuffled it to f6, which made the engine immediately raise a surprised eyebrow.
Pragg had anticipated that he would have a slight upper hand before the endgame unravelled: pointing out that while the theory suggested that him having two pawns to Caruana’s one on the board besides a knight each would be a drawn game, he had a chance to get something more.
“I’ve got a very interesting endgame. It is generally said knight four versus three is winning. And knight three versus two is supposedly a draw. But I’ve looked at some of these positions and if the white king is quite active it can be tricky! I’m hoping it will be tricky in this case as well,” Pragg said in the confessional booth in the middle of his game against Caruana. Tricky it did indeed get for Caruana, who just a few days away was being talked about as being close to overhauling Carlsen as the World No.1 but now finds himself ranked third in the world in the live ratings.
