Praggnanandhaa’s Golden Summer: From Norwegian Chess Glory to the GCT Crown

Indian Grandmaster Praggnanandhaa Until this summer, no Indian had won the elite Norwegian chess title. There was no Indian name even next to the Grand Chess Tour finals. R Praggnanandhaa, the shy and super-sharp boy from Chennai, a protege of Viswanathan Anand like many in the city, now has both crowns to call his own.Praggnanandhaa, the world number 12, claimed the Grand Chess Tour (GCT) title late on Thursday when he defeated Fabian Caruana 15-13 in St Louis, USA, considered the new Linares in chess circles and won $200,000 in prize money. Praggnanandhaa thus became the first Indian and only the seventh player in the tournament’s 11-year history to do so.Ahead of next year’s tournament and a pilot later this year in Budapest, it won’t be an exaggeration to call him the “unofficial” Total Chess World Champion.The 21-year-old has decided to play next month’s Olympics in the lucrative Global Chess League in Bengaluru. The decision has worked out very well for him as he has made it big in time for the Olympics, where India will try to defend their first team gold medal in three weeks.The positive news for Indian chess does not seem to end. The crop is fearless and the results are relentless, more importantly, at the “above Elo 2600” level and not just below it or in many online versions of the sport.Earlier this year, Praggnanandhaa did the unthinkable when he defeated world number one Magnus Carlsen twice in the classic games of Norwegian chess, a feat that included an unprecedented streak of four straight classic wins at the end of the Oslo tournament.If then the Indian chess sun shone brightly, now it has just spread its rays to a new area.Praggnanandhaa showed consistency throughout the year by topping the GCT table with only the top four advancing to the finals. And then, despite losing the first classic game of the final to Caruana in the title race and botching a likely equalizer in the second classic game for six points, he still showed admirable mental strength.Praggnanandhaa won both quick games worth four points each to take the lead over the highly regarded Caruana before leveling the four-game blitz section 4-4 with one player winning. He defeated the German super talent Vincent Keymer in the semi-finals.While this may be subjective and the chess world has its favourites, experts consider Praggnanandha to be the more versatile Indian player than world champion Gukesh and former Elo 2800 member Arjun Erigaisi, partly due to his technical prowess and more versatile style of play.This is why his failed campaigns in 2024 and 2026 and the way he imploded was particularly disheartening for Indian fans.Praggnanandhaa’s schedule in St Louis was exhausting. He played 27 quick and blitz games, then nine classical games, and another 16 games in the semi-finals and finals of the Tour.Now he can rest with a sense of accomplishment that is unparalleled.When his sister Vaishali didn’t fare too well in the women’s Classical Cairns Cup, which was played concurrently at the same venue, Praggnanandhaa planned his own major prize. The roles were reversed at the Cyprus Candidates earlier this year when Vaishali won the women’s title and Praggnanandhaa finished seventh in the eight-member field.Not that Praggnanandhaa hasn’t proven himself at the elite level before. He burst into the limelight by reaching the 2023 World Cup final in Baku, Azerbaijan, home of the great Garry Kasparov, and has now stamped his authority on the GCT Tour, the Russian’s brainchild.Between the World Cup elimination race and the Norwegian title, he scored a few points. But these came mostly in the classical part, with triumphs in Wijk aan Zee, the GCT Romania leg and the UzChess Cup in 2025, all in classical chess.World Championship challenger Javokhir Sindarov defeated Praggnanandhaa twice at the Cyprus Candidates. The Indian avenged these defeats in the Sinquefield Cup, where he finished joint first.Keymer defeated Praggnanandha in Sinquefield before being knocked out by the Indian masterminds in the semi-finals of the Tour Finale.