Chennai: India’s young Grandmaster R Praggnanandhaa has made a big difference on Monday. 16-year-old Pragnananda defeated world number one Magnus Carlsen in the 8th round of the online rapid chess tournament Airthings Masters. Pragnananda defeated Carlsen while playing black pieces in the match played on Monday morning Beat in 39 moves. In this way, he also put an end to the winning campaign of Carlsen, who had won 3 consecutive matches before this.
The Indian Grandmaster has eight points from this win and is in joint 12th position after the eighth round. Pragnananda’s victory over Carlsen, who did not perform as expected in the previous rounds, created a ruckus in the sports world. He had earlier only registered a win against Lev Aronian. Apart from this, Pragnananda played 2 games in a draw, while he had to face defeat in 4 matches.
Draws were made against Anish Giri and Liam
Pragnananda had drawn matches against Anish Giri and Kwang Lim while losing to Erik Hansen, Ding Liren, Jan Krzysztof Duda, and Shakhriyar Mamedyarov. Russia’s Ian Nepomniachtchi, who lost his World Championship match to Norway’s Carlsen a few months ago, is on top with 19 points.
They are followed by Ding Liren and Hansen (both 15 points). 16 players are participating in the AirThings Masters. In this, the player gets 3 points for a win and one point for a draw. Seven rounds of bets are yet to be played in the preliminary stage.
