R. Praggnanandhaa beats World Chess Champion Ding! Passes Anand too!

GM Praggnanandhaa has now taken over the number-one spot among Indian Chess players in the live ratings on Tuesday. This happened for the first time in his career. This 18-year-old wonder boy is actually originated from Chennai . Recently he has beaten the World Champion Ding Liren at the 2024 Tata Steel Chess Tournament and he also has leapfrogged GM Viswanathan Anand.

All you need to know about this wonder boy who became number one chess player!

Praggnanandhaa has become an international chess master at the age of 10. This made him the youngest at the time to do so. He became a grandmaster of chess at the age of only 12. This time he was second-youngest at the time to do that.

Praggnanandhaa has took the World Youth Chess Championship Under-8 title in 2013. He achieved his first grandmaster norm at the World Junior Chess Championship in November 2017 and the second norm at the Heraklion Fischer Memorial GM norm tournament in Greece on 17 April 2018. He is the fifth-youngest person to achieve the title of Grandmaster of Chess. 

Praggnanandhaa has beaten chess world champion Ding Liren!

India’s this wonderboy, the teenage chess sensation R Praggnanandhaa has now earned an epic victory. He has won against reigning world champion Ding Liren from China. This happened in the fourth round of the 2024 Tata Steel Chess Tournament, which took place in Wijk aan Zee, Netherlands.

The boy has now defeated Viswanathan Anand, who became world champion 5 times. Now Praggnanandhaa has emerged as the country’s top-ranked chess player. This was the first time when Praggnanandhaa has claimed the top spot.

Although while expressing his feelings about this game, he has called it a “strange game”.  Praggnanandhaa has shared his feelings during an interaction saying, “I felt I equalized very easily and then somehow things started to go wrong for him. Even after I won the pawn I felt it should be holdable.”