Grandmaster Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa didn’t envisage such a “crazy day” with eight hours of world class performance after which he pipped reigning World Champion D Gukesh to win his maiden Tata Steel Chess Tournament. “It was very long, close to eight hours, the first game itself lasted like 6.5 hours and then we had this blitz, it was a crazy day,” he said. On the impact of this victory, Praggnanandhaa said, “This is a very special event in the chess world and I have seen games from this tournament growing up. Last year, it did not go my way so I was really motivated for this tournament.”
“I think it showed in my play that I was quite ambitious in all the games trying to fight, that’s why we saw many decisive games.” For the records, Praggnanandhaa won six drew five and lost two games overall. About his future plans, Praggnanandhaa said the he will be competing at the Prague Masters.
“I knew what went wrong in the last six months and I knew what I needed to work on. I will keep trying to get better at it. I changed some things for this tournament (in my play) and it worked,” he said.
Speaking about first two games of the tiebreaker wherein he lost one and won the return game Praggnanandhaa pointed out that losing the first game was unnecessary, “I should have just taken the draw”.
In the second game, Gukesh had a fine position but was gradually outplayed. In the third game, the decider, Praggnanandhaa was again on the defensive with his white pieces but then found some nice moves and Gukesh got overambitious in a position that would have been a draw otherwise.
Speaking about his errors in the classical game that he lost against Vincent Keymer of Germany after attaining a fine position in the middle game the Indian admitted that he did strange things.
“I liked that position (middle-game), and then I started to do some strange things, at this point I saw that Gukesh had lost, but then I can’t do much than sit and wait and suffer in this position. I can’t resign, I can’t make any moves. I just have to wait and suffer. It was very disappointing,” the champion noted.
Asked how he could get back to playing the tie-breaker in good shape Praggnanandhaa said, “I was upset, but had an opportunity to try, I was just trying to calm myself. I stayed in the venue, I just closed my eyes and tried to rest.” The Chennai based further added that: “This was like one time opportunity. I could get upset and lose. I was not happy with the way I played the final game (against Keymer) but I could still win the event and that’s what matters.
“We both (he and Gukesh) very happy to get this opportunity to play as we both got outplayed today.”
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