Tata Blitz – a video feast

Pragg on the big stage

In 2016, the Chennai born R. Praggnanandhaa became the youngest International Master in history. He was 10 years, 10 months and 19 days when he made his final norm. In June this year, at the age of 12 years, 10 months and 14 days, he became the second pre-teen chess grandmaster in history. 

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Experience the meteoric rise of the youngest Grandmaster of all time into the world elite in specially selected master games. IM D'Costa presents brilliant victories in a new interactive training format with video feedback!

Photo: ChessBase India shows the 10-year-old giving a simultaneous exhibition.

This week Praggnanandhaa, who just turned thirteen three months ago, took part in the blitz tournament of the Tata Steel India 2018 tournament. It was a category 19 event, with ten participants and an average rating of 2719. Pragg was the lowest rated player in the field, which included eight GMs rated over 2700, and he finished the event in last place. He scored 5.5 points in 18 games, which translated to a 2600 performance. You can see a full cross table here.

Now for the treat of the day: watching this young lad play blitz chess. Our partner from ChessBase India, IM Sagar Shah, has thankfully recorded a number of games, with the video camera at just the right angle, so you can sit back and enjoy the action. Switch to full screen and you have a wonderful view, better than any visitor in the playing hall.

The first game from round six Praggnanandhaa faces Viswanathan Anand, who won the Blitz with an overall score of 14.0/18 points. It is worth noting that Anand became a grandmaster seventeen years before his opponent was born — and won his first (of five) World Championship titles five year before Pragg first saw the light of day. Both are from Chennai in South India, both speak the Dravidian language of Tamil and get on very well together.

Over 1.3 million people have already watched this video on YouTube

Here is the game to replay and analyse (click the fan icon to start an engine) on our Javascript board. It has been annotated by the chess engine that looks after our Live Chess page. There you can find all important events covered, with the most important games containing computer analysis.

After this loss to his hero Anand young Praggu faced him again in round 15. This rematch starts with a lot of positional maneuvering — it is fascinating to watch the 13-year-old think. He gets into serious time trouble, but handles that phase very well. The last third of the video is positively gripping. 

My Career Vol. 1

The first DVD with videos from Anand's chess career reflects the very beginning of that career and goes as far as 1999. It starts with his memories of how he first learned chess and shows his first great games (including those from the 1984 WCh for juniors). The high point of his early developmental phase was the winning of the 1987 WCh for juniors. After that, things continue in quick succession: the first victories over Kasparov, WCh candidate in both the FIDE and PCA cycles and the high point of the WCh match against Kasparov in 1995.
Running time: 3:48 hours

At the end of the video both GMs discuss the game, but Sagar's camera did not catch their whispered speech. If you, dear reader, can lip-read, in Tamil, please tell us what they are saying.

In these two games Praggu did put up a good fight, but the immense exprience of the multiple-time World Champion carried the day. We do not want to leave it at two losses for the lad, so we show you one more game. It is remarkable for the fact that the two youngest grandmasters in the history of the game are facing each other: Sergey Karjakin gained his title sixteen years ago, at the age of 12 years, seven months and zero days. (We need to mention that there is a new player between the two: last month Javokhir Sindarov apparently beat Praggnanandhaa by three days).

Anyway, here's the remarkable round five game, in which Pragg had the black pieces against former World Championship Challenger Sergey Karjakin. Once again we remind you: Sergey became a grandmaster fifteen years before the prodigy from Chennai was born. He is now 28 and 223 points higher than Pragg on the Elo scale. Once again the last phase of the game takes away your breath. This is a video you must not miss. 

My Career Vol. 2

Vishy Anand is one of the greatest chess talents of all times. On this DVD he speaks about his career, his views on chess, and presents the most beautiful and interesting games of his career.

Did you enjoy it, are you inspired? You can replay all the moves and check things out on our replay board:

Incidentally, in the Tata Steel Blitz Praggnanandhaa beat GM Surya Shekhar Ganguly, rated 2615, twice, drew Nakamura twice and held Wesley So, Pentala Harikrishna and Vidit Gujrathi to one draw each. Quite remarkable.

Special thanks to ChessBase India for providing this video. There are hundreds of videos on their very successful ChessBase India YouTube Channel, and we are going to make vigorous use of them in the future.

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