The 18-year-old Indian Chess prodigy, R Praggnanandhaa will be in action in FIDE World Cup final in Baku, Azerbaijan on August 24. The second game of the FIDE World Cup Finals ended in a draw on August 23, meaning, the winner will now be decided through a tie-breaker.
Carlsen made a very solid draw against Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa with the White pieces. However, Pragg did not face any trouble with Black and the players agreed to a draw after 30 moves in an equal Bishop ending. The second game of the final was also the quickest game of the World Cup so far as World No 1 Carlsen went into the match unwell.
On his way to the final, R Praggnanandhaa beat world no.3 Hikaru Nakamura 2-0 in tiebreaks and World no.2 Fabiano Caruana 2.5-1.5 in tiebreaks. However, it will be interesting to see how the final tiebreak of the tournament ends. It shall be noted that the tie-breaker will be played in a shorter format.
The tie-breakers will be played in the rapid and blitz format. It will start with the rapid format, which is a set of two games. Both the players will have 25 minutes of time control and will get an increment of 10 seconds per move, starting from move 1.
If that fails to give us a winner, the players will then engage in two more games but with a time control of 10 minutes for each player. The players, however, will continue to receive a 10-second increment per move, starting from move 1.
But if that too fails to produce a winner, two more games will be played but with the time control now reduced to 5 minutes per player. In this round a player will only see an increment of 3 seconds per move, starting from move 1.
If the contest still hangs in balance, the blitz portion of the tiebreak, which is similar to sudden death, will come into play. The previous rounds were played in a set of two games, however, here the rule changes to one game with a time control of 3 minutes, plus a 2-second increment per move, starting from move 1. This will continue until we have a winner.
Carlsen is an amazing rapid and blitz player. He has been 4-time world rapid champion and 6-time world blitz champion.
Carlsen vs Praggnanandhaa
Praggnanandhaa has faced Carlsen on previous occasions, where he challenged the five-time world champion, defeating him thrice in the last 6 months. Praggnanandhaa defeated Carlsen in February 2022 at the Airthings Masters (an online rapid chess tournament), in the process becoming the youngest person to defeat Carlsen since he became world champion in 2013.
The second time he stunned the Norwegian was at the Chessable Masters online rapid chess tournament on May 20.
On the other hand, Fabiano Caruana of the USA made a fantastic return to beat GM Nijat Abasov in game 2. The winner will be decided in a tiebreak. In addition to this, Praggnanandhaa has also qualified for Candidates 2024 tournament, becoming the third youngest player after Bobby Fischer and Carlsen to qualify for the Candidates tournament.