By Daily Sports Nigeria on March 21, 2022

New Delhi, India – In India, a nation of more than a billion people who are mostly crazy about cricket, Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa was drawn towards chess at the age of three.

He watched his sister Vaishali Rameshbabu – enrolled in a chess academy by their father who was miffed at her addiction to television – practice in her room. That is when Praggnanandhaa says he fell in love with chess.

Initially, he would just play on his own before he started practicing with his 21-year-old sister who became his first role model in the game.

Praggnanandhaa’s rise to success took a steep path. Aged seven, he achieved the title of FIDE Master, the third-highest title a chess player can achieve after the Grandmaster and International Master titles.

Just three years later, he achieved the International Master title, becoming the youngest player ever to accomplish the feat.

More success followed swiftly.

Two years later, in 2018, Praggnanandhaa became the fifth-youngest Grandmaster globally and the youngest Indian to achieve the title. His routine of practicing for hours daily had finally paid dividends.

In February this year, the 16-year-old added another feather to his cap when he beat the world’s top-ranked chess player Magnus Carlsen in the Airthings Masters, an online rapid chess competition.

It was past 1am in India. Praggnanandhaa, dressed in a pink t-shirt, constantly toyed with his hair, seemingly exhausted.

Carlsen, in a more comfortable setting as the tournament was held during Central European Time, seemed in better spirits.

The game was Praggnanandhaa’s fourth of the night. In the three games prior to that, Praggnanandhaa had won one, lost another, while the third ended in a draw.

For the first 31 moves over 33 minutes into the game, Praggnanandhaa gave a tough competition to Carlsen, a five-time world champion from Norway, until the latter made what the commentators termed “a blunder”.

From there, it took Praggnanandhaa just seven moves to register a stunning victory over Carlsen, becoming the third Indian – and the youngest – to do so since the Norwegian become world champion in 2013.

For a moment, the teenager, who stunned Carlsen in the eighth round of the tournament, could not believe he had defeated the world’s best.

Shortly after his historic win, Praggnanandhaa nonchalantly remarked: “It’s time to go to bed as I don’t think I will have dinner at 2:30 in the morning.”

By the time he woke up in the morning, Praggnanandhaa was in the headlines.

“I definitely imagined beating the world’s number one player one day but I had not expected the day will come so soon,” he told Al Jazeera over the phone from Chennai just days after accomplishing the feat.

Source ALJAZEERA SPORTS

Posted March 21, 2022

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