Tracking the journey of Indian star Praggnanandhaa

Young Indian Grandmaster Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa stunned the world on Monday by winning as World No. 1 Magnus Carlsen in the eighth round of the Airthings Masters. He won the tournament with black pieces in 39 moves in a Tarrasch variation game early on Monday to halt Carlsen’s run of three straight wins.

Praggnanandhaa, born on Aug 10, 2005, is the fifth-youngest person ever to achieve the title of GM. His love for chess was from his sister Vaishali with whom he has discussed games and learned all the key mistakes from. Her sister was his in-house coach and sparring partner who taught and inspired him to take chess as a career in life. Then, he was trained by RB Ramesh with whom he went to chess tournaments.

Praggnanandhaa’s evolutionary leap happened after he won the World Youth Chess Championships Under-8 title in 2013, earning him the title of FIDE Master at the age of 7. Then on, the 2nd youngest international GM won the title of U10 in 2015 and became the youngest international master in history, at the age of 10 years, 10 months, and 19 days. 

He achieved his first GM title at the World Junior Chess Championship in November 2017, finishing fourth with 8 points. The second norm was gained by him at the Heraklion Fischer Memorial GM Norm tournament in Greece in 2018 and then he achieved his third and final norm at the Gredine Open in Urtijëi, Italy, by defeating Luca Moroni in the eighth round to become, at the age of 12 years, 10 months and 13 days becoming the second-youngest person ever to achieve the rank of grandmaster (Karjakin attained the title at 12 years and 7 months).

In 2018, Praggnanandhaa was invited to the Magistral de León Masters in Spain for a four-game rapid match against Wesley So. He defeated So in game one, and after three games the score was tied at 1½–1½. In the last game, So defeated Praggnanandhaa, winning the match 2½–1½ and he also tied for third place with GM Alder Escobar Forero and IM Denys Shmelov in the Charlotte Chess Center's Winter 2018 GM Norm Invitational held in Charlotte, North Carolina, with a score of 5.0/9.

In 2019, Praggnanandhaa won the Xtracon Chess Open in Denmark and the World Youth Championships in the U-18 section with a score of 9/11.

In 2021, he won the Polgar Challenge, the first leg (out of four) of the Julius Baer Challengers Chess Tour, a rapid online event organised by Julius Baer Group and Chess24.com for young talents, and scored 15.5/19, 1.5 points ahead of the next best-placed competitors. This particular win, helped him to qualify for Meltwater Champions Chess Tour on 24 April 2021, where he finished in 10th place with a score of 7/15 (+4-5=6), including wins against Teimour Radjabov, Jan-Krzysztof Duda, Sergey Karjakin, and Johan-Sebastian Christiansen as well as a draw against World Champion Magnus Carlsen.

Then, Praggnanandhaa entered the Chess World Cup 2021 as the 90th seed and defeated GM Gabriel Sargissian 2–0 in round 2, and advanced to round 4 after defeating GM Michał Krasenkow in the rapid tiebreaks in round 3 but was unfortunately eliminated in round four by Maxime Vachier-Lagrave.

R Praggnanandhaa also had played in the Master's section of the Tata Steel Chess Tournament 2022 and now he has stunned the world by winning as World No 1, Magnus Carlsen in the eighth round of the Airthings Masters.