R Praggnanandhaa lost to Magnus Carlsen in the Chess World Cup final.© Twitter
India’s R Praggnanandhaa, over the last three days in the Chess World Cup final against Magnus Carlsen, showed the world that he is here to stay at the top in chess for years to come. The 18-year-old stunned a series of top names in global chess to set up a Chess World Cup title clash with world No. 1 Magnus Carlsen. The Indian teenager lost the fight against his five-time World Championship winner but not before dragging the match to the tie-breakers. Though Carlsen prevailed on Praggnanandhaa, he gave him a new tag that might make him proud.
“It’s little bit funny that I faced almost zero players in their prime. I played Chuky (Vasyl Ivanchuk) and then I played three youngsters. So, yeah, obviously they are very, very strong. I felt like I had my by far best day and game of the event against Gukesh on the first day. Otherwise, that match would’ve been extremely tough. As for the others, they are very strong. Vincent (Keymer) pushed me the hardest, he was one move away from eliminating me, and leaving everything else moot,” Carlsen said on Chess 24 after winning his maiden Chess World Cup title.
“They are all very good, Gukesh is clearly the strongest classical player right now. And then, you have Pragg and (Nodirbek) Abdusattorov who are really strong but also mentality monsters. And then, I think on a tier slightly below, we have Vincent and a few others. But what I think is pretty clear is that chess is in good hands for the future. The generation of players, born from 1990-1994 really have dominated for a long time, and finally now, with these youngsters born in 2003 and after, we have a generation that’s worthy of succeeding us.”
Though, Praggnanandhaa had to settle for the position of runner-up of the 2023 FIDE World Cup but he will draw hope from the fact that he has qualfied for the FIDE Candidates tournament.
The 2024 Candidates Tournament will be an eight-player chess tournament scheduled to be held from 2 April to 25 April 2024 in Toronto, Canada. The winner of the tournament will becomne the challenger for the 2024 World Chess Championship match.
Praggnanandhaa had an excellent tournament where he defeated World No. 2 Hikaru Nakamura in a tie-breaker while reaching the final defeating World No. 3 Fabiano Caruana.
With ANI inputs
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