After FIDE World Cup show, what's Pragg up to now?

The ‘Pragg effect’ continues to keep the chess community in thrall as the prodigious 18-year-old returned to his home city Chennai to a hero’s welcome on Wednesday. While he finished runner-up to Magnus Carlsen in the final of the FIDE World Cup in Baku and qualified for the Candidates series, Ramesh Praggnanandhaa was part of the elite WR Chess team which won the inaugural FIDE World Rapid Chess Championship in Stockholm on Tuesday, 29 August. 

A part of the star-studded WR team, which comprised 2021 FIDE World Championship runner-up Ian Nepomniachtchi, Jan-Krzysztof Duda, Hou Yifan and Alexandra Kosteniuk, Pragg was unstoppable with a score of 6.5/7 to help team clinch the title with a round to spare.

Interestingly, it was a collective win for Pragg & co. against Team Freedom, the runners-up, which had Pragg’s inspiration and mentor Viswanathan Anand in their ranks. Another Indian GM, P. Harikrishna’s team MGD 1, came out ahead in the fight for bronze. 

Pragg’s stupendous run also got the leading lights of world women’s chess talking at the draw ceremony of the Tata Steel Chess India Rapid & Blitz in a Kolkata hotel.

Taking heart at the collective showing of India’s youth brigade, Koneru Humpy, one of the early women’s GMs from India, told local media: ‘’I feel these youngsters are a very talented bunch. We have seen what Praggnanandhaa has achieved. But we must also remember that N. Gukesh is also doing quite well and so are Arjun (Erigaisi) and Nihal (Sarin). The interesting aspect is that everyone has a different style of play and cannot be compared with others.’’ 

Come 5 September, Praggnanandhaa, Erigaisi, Vidit Gujrathi, and Gukesh Dommaraju will be seen in action in the open category of the Kolkata event along with Alexander Grischuk and Nodirbek Abdusattorov.

The women’s segment, which got under way on Thursday, features Chinese world champion Ju Wenjun; Anna Ushenina, Humpy, and Harika Dronavalli among others. Ju became the world champion in May 2018 and has since defended her title twice in 2020 and 2023.  

The Kolkata event, incidentally, will showcase both Indian men and women’s teams for the upcoming Asian Games in China.  

Anand, a five-time world champion who is the FIDE vice president and tournament ambassador, said in a release: “We have a wonderful generation of youngsters, the golden generation who are making India proud at the international level. Tata Steel and this tournament is giving a great opportunity to them to compete with the best players and we hope this experience gives them the confidence to excel at the Asian Games.”