Until this summer, no Indian had won the elite Norway Chess title. There was no Indian name alongside the Grand Chess Tour finale either. R Praggnanandhaa, that shy and super-sharp boy from Chennai, a Viswanathan Anand mentee like many from the city, now has both crowns to call his own.Late on Thursday, Praggnanandhaa, the world No. 12, claimed the Grand Chess Tour (GCT) title, beating Fabiano Caruana 15-13 in St Louis, US, considered the new Linares in chess circles, and pocketed $200,000 in prize money. Praggnanandhaa thus became the first Indian and only the seventh player in the tournament’s 11-year history to achieve the feat.It won’t be an exaggeration to call him the ‘unofficial’ Total Chess world champion ahead of the tournament’s inauguration next year and the pilot project later this year in Budapest.The 21-year-old has chosen to play next month’s Olympiad over the lucrative Global Chess League in Bengaluru. That decision has worked out very well for him because he achieved a major success well in time for the Olympiad, where India will try to defend their maiden team gold medal in three weeks’ time.The positive tidings for Indian chess don’t 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 the many online versions of the sport.Earlier this year, Praggnanandhaa had done the unthinkable by beating world No. 1 Magnus Carlsen twice in classical games at Norway Chess, a feat that included an unprecedented sequence of four straight classical wins at the end of the tournament in Oslo.If the Indian chess sun was shining brightly then, it has now just extended its rays to a new region.Praggnanandhaa has shown year-round consistency by topping the GCT table, with only the top four making it to the finale. And then, despite losing the first classical game of the final to Caruana in the title clash and messing up a probable equaliser in the second classical game, worth six points, he still displayed admirable mental strength.Praggnanandhaa won both rapid games, worth four points each, to take the lead over the highly regarded Caruana before drawing the four-game blitz section 4-4, with one win for either player. He had beaten German super talent Vincent Keymer in the semifinals.While this may be subjective, and the chess world has its favourites, experts consider Praggnanandhaa a more well-rounded Indian player than world champion Gukesh and former Elo 2800 member Arjun Erigaisi, partly due to his technical prowess and more universal style of play.That is why his failed campaigns at the 2024 and 2026 Candidates, and the manner in which he imploded, were particularly disheartening for Indian fans.Praggnanandhaa’s St Louis schedule was gruelling. He played 27 rapid and blitz games, then nine classical games, and another 16 games in the semifinals and finals of the Tour.Now, he can rest with a sense of achievement, a high like no other.When his sister Vaishali was not doing too well at the Classical Cairns Cup for women, being played concurrently at the same venue, Praggnanandhaa was plotting his own grand 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-player field.Not that Praggnanandhaa hadn’t proved himself before at the elite level. He burst into the limelight by reaching the 2023 World Cup final in Baku, the birthplace of the great Garry Kasparov, in Azerbaijan, and has now stamped his authority on the GCT Tour, which has been the brainchild of the Russian.In between his knockout World Cup run and the Norway title, he had several high points. But those came largely in the classical section, with triumphs at Wijk aan Zee, the GCT Romania leg and the UzChess Cup in 2025, all in classical chess.World championship challenger Javokhir Sindarov had humbled Praggnanandhaa twice at the Cyprus Candidates. The Indian avenged those defeats at the Sinquefield Cup, where he finished joint first.Keymer defeated Praggnanandhaa at Sinquefield before getting knocked out by the Indian’s cerebral powers in the semifinals of the Tour Finale.
