See: Magnus Carlsen won the World Cup Chess Finals tie breaker to become the champion. Pragnananda, the young player of India from Tamil Nadu, fought back and finished second.
The World Cup Chess Series was held in Baku, Azerbaijan. Pragnananda, an 18-year-old Indian Grandmaster from Chennai, played the top seed Magnus Carlsen of Norway in the final. The first of the classical two-game finals yesterday (Tuesday) lasted about 4 hours and ended in a draw at the 35th move.
Yesterday (Wednesday) Carlson – Pragnananda clashed in the 2nd game. After about an hour and a half, the game ended in a draw at the 30th piece move. Carlson and Pragnananda scored 1 point each at the end of two games in the final. Both of them played a tie breaker match today to decide the champion.
Tiebreaker: A two-game tiebreaker was played to determine the winner in a time-controlled rapid format. Carlson won the first match. In this game Pragnananda challenged from the start. Still he struggled and could not win. Carlson won the World Cup Chess Championship with a 2-game draw. With this, Pragnananda finished 2nd in the Open category in this series. 3rd place went to Fabiano Caruna.
World record holder Pragnananda! – Although he did not win the championship title, Tamil Nadu’s Pragnananda created history as the youngest finalist in the Chess World Cup. Earlier chess champion Viswanathan Anand had played in the World Cup but never made it at such a young age.
Hailing from Chennai, Pragnananda, without any socio-economic background, has reached such heights only through his talent. Pragnananda, who played chess world champion Magnus Carlsen in the final round, practiced playing chess for at least 8 hours every day.
More importantly, he maintains a calm demeanor no matter how stressful the game. His national coach Shyam Sundar has said that he has the intelligence to perfectly calculate the opponent’s weakness like a detective Sambu. Something more interesting than this has been said by RP Ramesh, a famous chess coach who is giving special training to Pragnananda in Chennai.
In other words, Pragnananda will be seen from the age of 6 years with a mindset of treating success and failure equally whether it is a local competition or a world competition. In the same way, he does not aim to win but enjoys playing with his heart. Scholars have said that the path is more important than the destination.
