Meet 16-year-old Indian Chess Grandmaster who defeated World No. 1

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History was created when a 16-year-old Indian Grandmaster defeated World No. 1, Magnus Carlsen, in the 8th round of the Airthings Masters, an online rapid chess tournament.

The teenager defeated Carlsen with black pieces to put an end to Carlsen’s 3-match winning streak in the competition. It took Carlsen about 19 moves to undo World No. 1.

Praggnanandha was on a 3-game losing streak when he met Carlsen. He went on to beat the Norwegian to eventually finish at 5th place in the tournament.

In total, Praggnanandha had secured only a single win before the match against Carlsen. That win had come over Lav Aronian. Other than that, he had suffered a total of 2 draws and 4 losses. The draws had come against Anish Giri and Quang Liem Le. Eric Hansen, Ding Liren, Jan-Kryzstof Duda, and Shakhriyar Mamedyarov.

Post victory, Praggnanadhaa said: “I’m just going to go to bed”.

Born on August 10, 2005, in Chennai, Rameshbabu Praggnanandha is presently the 5th youngest in the world to earn the title of being a Grandmaster. Abhimanyu Mishra, Sergey Karjakin, Gukesh D, and Javokhir Sindarov are the ones ahead of him.

Praggnanandha had earlier won the World Youth Chess Championship Under-8 title back in 2013. Aged just 7, he also won the FIDE Master honor which is an open title that is below Grandmaster and International Master.

Later, Praggnanandha became the youngest International Master at the age of 10 years, 10 months, and 19 days. This achievement had come in 2016. At age of 12 years, 10 months, and 13 days, he has crowned the youngest Grandmaster after Russia’s chess star Sergey Karjakin.

Rameshbabu has an elder sister Vaishali Rameshbabu. He idolizes the one and only Viswanathan Anand.

“The burden of expectation can get to him at times. When he loses, it sometimes affects him more than it should. He’s working on it, but he’s just 16 and I’m really glad at how he’s handled himself against some of the top guys,” RB Ramesh, Prgnanandha’s coach said.

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