“Maturing as a chess player”, Praggnanandhaa on beating Magnus Carlsen

Sporting a black suit, R Praggnanandhaa was asked to walk into a hall in a city five-star hotel for a video shoot. The shy 17-year-old had a wry smile as he stepped up for the camera. Minutes earlier, decking up the hall for Praggnanandhaa’s simultaneous chess playoff with a few invited guests, a montage of his recent wins over world champion Magnus Carlsen had been played out.

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The young Indian Grandmaster (GM) may not be as used to this kind of spotlight as he is to winning games of chess. But when you beat Carlsen thrice within months, it is bound to happen. “I mean, more people have got to know about me,” the soft-spoken Praggnanandhaa said on the sidelines of the event by Julius Baer India. “In a larger sense, it’s good for the game in India.”

It’s been a good few months for the Chennai player. Among his notable results are beating the reigning five-time world champion thrice in online events this year, defeating world No 7 Anish Giri of Netherlands, being part of the India’s bronze-winning team at the 2022 Chess Olympiad and giving a fight to Chinese world No 2 Ding Liren in the Chessable Masters final.

Praggnanandhaa termed his current phase “maturing as a chess player”. “It’s one of those stages where you’re almost there in elite chess,” he said.

He has already broken through the Carlsen citadel, thrice at that. Not that it gets any easier after the first crack. “Beating him even in a single bullet game is tough,” he chuckled. “He’s just too strong, and if everyone talks about it (beating him), he is not going to allow it again easily. It’s tough, but somehow I managed to do it thrice.”

All Praggnanandhaa wanted to do was hit the bed after the first win over the Norwegian. That’s his way of celebrating, while he turns to watching comedy movies as distraction after tough defeats. “In general, I’m very good at taking losses. I do not get too upset. I just try not to think too much about the game. Get the focus back on the next game.”

His rise may have been expectedly swift, but Praggnanandhaa knows there’s “a lot to improve”, especially in the classical format and on the finer aspects of the game, like expanding his repertoire in openings. “My (FIDE) rating is slowly getting there. It’s currently at 2687, but I think it can be higher. I’m working towards it. Hopefully, I get more invitations to play stronger events and then graduate to the next stage.”

Along with coach RB Ramesh, he spends hours “analysing my games, try to see what’s going wrong, find a pattern and work on it”. However, self-learning is a big part in the Praggnanandhaa developmental process.

“Working on your own is very important. You can’t have classes every day, and you also have to be sharp,” he said. “With Ramesh sir, it’s mostly about working on what’s going wrong and improving there. Like on openings, because these top guys are very good at openings and also understanding them. So we have to get stronger in that.”

The success of fellow Indians of his age group too rubs off on Praggnanandhaa. The Chess Olympiad Indian team that clinched bronze comprised Praggnanandhaa, D Gukesh, Nihal Sarin and Raunak Sadhwani, all in their teens. “It does inspire and motivate. It’s important to have such a bunch of players together because, if one player does well, the other will get inspired.”

On cheating row

With the Carlsen-Hans Niemann cheating row taking centre stage in world chess, Praggnanandhaa believed it might be a good thing but hoped it would reach a logical conclusion.

“I usually trust everyone. Even if they cheat against me in an online game, I don’t care. What will happen in the worst case? I’ll lose. So I’ve never really focused on it,” he said. “But there’s a lot of talk going on now. I don’t know how it’s going to end. There have been a lot of cases earlier. It may be a good thing that he (Carlsen) brought up.

“If it ends well, it’ll be better. It will stop a lot of fishy things.”

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