16-year-old Indian Grandmaster R Praggnanandhaa stunned world no 1 Magnus Carlsen in the eighth round of the Airthings Masters, an online rapid chess tournament. Playing with black pieces, Pragnananda defeated Carlsen in 39 moves in the match played on Monday morning. In this way, he also put an end to the winning campaign of Carlsen, who had won 3 consecutive matches before this.
The young Indian Grandmaster has eight points from this win and is in joint 12th position after the eighth round. Pragnananda’s victory over Carlsen, who did not perform as expected in the previous rounds, created a sensation in the sports world. He had earlier only registered a win against Lev Aronian. Apart from this, Pragnananda played 2 draws while he had to face defeat in 4 matches.
Pragnananda had drawn matches against Anish Giri and Quang Liem Le, while losing to Erik Hansen, Ding Liren, Jan-Kryzstof Duda and Shakhriyar Mamedyarov.
Russia’s Ian Nepomniachtchi, who lost his World Championship match to Norway’s Carlsen a few months ago, is on top with 19 points. He is followed by Ding Liren and Hansen (both 15 points). 16 players are participating in the AirThings Masters. In this, the player gets 3 points for a win and one point for a draw. Seven rounds of matches are yet to be played in the preliminary stage.