After defeating World Chess Champion Ding Liren, India’s top chess player, Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa, secured the top rank. On Wednesday at the 2024 Tata Steel Chess Tournament, the 18-year-old overcame the renowned Viswanathan Anand to secure the top rank by defeating China’s Liren with the black pieces. Praggnanandhaa expressed his amazement at the result, saying he didn’t anticipate the world champion to be eliminated in such a manner. “I thought I quickly reached equality, but for him, everything seemed to start going wrong after that. According to Praggnanandhaa, “Even after I won the pawn, I felt it should be holdable,” as Chess.com reported.
“I believe that beating a player of that caliber is always noteworthy since it’s not a simple feat to do. It feels nice to win against a world champion in classical chess for the first time,” he continued.
After beginning to play at the age of five, Praggnanandhaa became the youngest Grandmaster in India and the second-youngest Grandmaster in the world at the age of twelve in 2018. After Javokhir Sindarov, Gukesh D, Abhimanyu Mishra, and Sergey Karjakin, he is the fifth-youngest Grandmaster in history. Interestingly, his older sister R Vaishali is also a Grandmaster, hence the two of them are the first brother and sister GM team in history.
Grandmaster Anish Giri was the only group leader in the Masters category going into the first rest day. Giri defeated D Gukesh thanks to some incredible plays.
