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Praggnanandhaa posted a win over Norwegian World No.1 Carlsen in the classification games for third place at the Las Vegas Freestyle Chess event on Sunday.
Praggnanandhaa, Magnus Carlsen. (X)
Indian GM Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa posted a win over Norwegian World No.1 Magnus Carlsen in the classification games for third place at the Las Vegas Freestyle Chess event on Saturday. Pragg had got the better of Carlsen in the classification games for the quarterfinal spot a couple of days earlier.
Pragg, who was on white pieces on the day, pushed Carlsen to the extent of resigning the game at the end of 43 moves to pick up his second win over the Norwegian in three days at the event in the USA.
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The teenager’s previous win over Carlsen took a toll on the Norwegian, who also went down to American Levon Aronian in his subsequent game to be knocked out of the title race early in the event. Pragg survived one round more than Carlsen did as the Indian eventually fell to Fabiano Caruana.
Arjun Erigasi went a bit further than Pragg before he was defeated by Aronian in a gilt-edged game that helped the American move forward.
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Pragg, as he is fondly known, has enjoyed a good campaign this season, clinching three titles already, at Tata Steel Chess Tournament and the Grand Chess Tour Superbet Classic in Romania and the UzChess Cup, which helped him climb to a career-best ranking of fourth in the world as he leapfrogged World Champion D Gukesh and compatriot Erigaisi.
Carlsen revealed that the isolation of the competition fazed him and added that he might have fared better had to been permitted to talk to his wife or coach between games.
“I think it started well on Day 1. I felt all right, relatively rested, at least compared to other days. And then I don’t know, I didn’t enjoy the whole process of just being pretty isolated there for many, many hours and not being able to talk to coach Peter Heine Nielsen or my wife, between rounds and not being able to use my devices and so on. What happened then was just kind of a complete collapse of my nervous system,” Carlsen said.
“I could have scraped through, of course, with some help, but it would have been completely underserved. So, it was a complete collapse, and yeah, sometimes you have one bad day, and I’ve had that in Freestyle before in the preliminaries, but then there’s been a bit of a wider margin to get through. This time it wasn’t. It’s not an excuse. I should make it regardless,” the 34-year-old added.
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