Prag, conqueror of Carlsen at 18, in line to challenge world champion

He may only be 18, but Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu has made it a habit of drawing chess to the front pages of newspapers in a cricket-crazy country like India. From beating reigning world champion Magnus Carlsen in early 2022 to sealing a spot in the 2024 Candidates series — to determine who will play world champion Ding Liren — this prodigious talent has shown a knack of springing surprises on the 64 squares.

Prag, as the pencil-thin youngster born in Viswanathan Anand’s home city of Chennai is popularly called, wore down compatriot and friend Arjun Erigaisi in a five-hour thriller in their World Cup chess quarter-final in Baku on Thursday. This makes him the first Indian after Anand to make the semi-finals of the tournament, earning him a spot in the eight-member Candidates tournament field as Carlsen has opted out of the race.

It is too early to say if Prag is in line to be the youngest world champion a few years from now, but he is certainly a remarkable addition to the conveyor belt of Indian chess, which churns out Grandmasters barely in their teens on a regular basis. While he became a GM at the age of 12 years, 10 months and 13 days, Gukesh Dommaraju emerged as the third youngest to wear the hat in 2019.

Gukesh, who lost to Carlsen in the quarter-finals of the ongoing World Cup, is currently the top-ranked Indian (eighth in the world) as per the FIDE rankings with 2758 ELO points. Five-time world champion Carlsen, who is participating in Baku but will not compete in the Candidates series, feels Gukesh can still be in the fray to play the event which decides the challenger to the world champion. If that eventually happens, there will be two Indians in the running to have a shot at the world crown in Prag and Gukesh — underlying the country’s prowess in the sport.

“Prag is the real deal. All he needs to do is dot the i’s and cross the t’s. The basic ingredients are all there — just needs to be the complete pack,’’ remarked Anand as the young man shocked Carlsen in February last year. It was the beginning of a sequence of three wins on the trot when he beat Carlsen next in the Chessable Masters rapid chess tournament to emerge as champion and followed it up with another win in the final round of the FTX Crypto Cup, where he was runner-up.

A viral sound byte featuring Prag is of him during a media interview after beating Carlsen for the first time, when he simply says, “I think it’s about just going to bed,” when asked the secret of his success. A year since he burst into the limelight, Prag has now become a widely followed presence on social media, with more than 26,000 followers on Twitter and 11,000 on Facebook, indicating his growing celebrity status.

Born into a middle-class family, Prag and his elder sister Vaishali took to chess like fish to water. Their early days were not without struggle, given the family's sole source of income was their mother as their father was affected by polio. Thankfully, this did not deter the siblings as Prag became the youngest International Master (10 years 10 months and 19 days), while Vaishali became a Woman Grandmaster (WGM) in 2018 and an IM in 2021.

It’s only the beginning of what could be a fascinating journey.