Abdusattorov Enters Live Top 10 After Win In Prague Masters Opening Round

For the first time in his career, GM Nodirbek Abdusattorov entered the world top 10 on the live rating list today. The Uzbek grandmaster defeated GM Thai Dai Van Nguyen in what was a combative opening round of the Prague Masters.

GM Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu won a very complicated game against GM Vincent Keymer where the first 24 moves were preparation. GM Parham Maghsoodloo started with a win with the black pieces against GM Mateusz Bartel.

Day two starts on Wednesday at 9 a.m. ET / 15:00 CET / 7:30 p.m. IST.

Prague Masters | Round 1 Results

The Prague Chess Festival is being held for the sixth time already and this year is the strongest so far. Apart from other rising stars, like Abdusattorov and Keymer, all three Indian participants of the upcoming Candidates Tournament felt that it made sense to include it in their schedule.

As part of a generation that seems to believe that playing is just as important as training, Praggnanandhaa called it perfect timing: "To have a long break is not ideal, I felt."

Pragg, whose shortened name is pronounced about the same as the capital of the Czech Republic, got off to an excellent start with a win against Keymer. 11 days after the Freestyle Chess tournament, this game once again reminded us how deep preparation can go in classical chess.

Position after 9...Nh5.

Keymer's ninth move (9...Nh5) seemed provocative, because after 10.Bg5 Nf6 he was giving his opponent two tempi just to be able to hit that white bishop with 11...h6 and 12...g5 next—more signs of chess in the year 2024! 

Praggnanandhaa didn't shy away from the typical long-term piece sacrifice with 13.Nxg5, and soon the game got incredibly complicated. GM Viswanathan Anand, who joined the broadcast for quite a while in his role as ambassador of the tournament, said he wasn't sure he would have done the same: "Quite often I would just talk myself out of it: 'He must have prepared, so why am I checking,' this kind of thing."

It was a difficult game for both players, and indeed, Pragg said afterward: "I was not sure what was going on." He revealed that both players were in their prep until move 24, even though Keymer had already spent more than an hour on the clock there.

Besides deep computer preparation, Praggnanandhaa also won this game thanks to excellent play (especially 25.g3 and 26.g4!), as GM Rafael Leitao shows: 

Pragg-Keymer sums up modern/future chess for me; ancient opening, reams of engine information, complications so mind-bending that time trouble ensues immediately upon coping independently with machine 'equality'

— Jonathan Tisdall @gmjtis@universeodon.com (@GMjtis) February 27, 2024

After scoring 2.5/3 in the Bundesliga last weekend for his team SC Viernheim, Abdusattorov added another win today and one that was quite significant. It brought his rating up to 2753.5, just enough to enter the top 10 on the live ratings. He also did well in Wijk aan Zee and at Weissenhaus, so the 19-year-old Uzbek is truly on a roll.

23-year-old Nguyen, one of the two Czech participants, actually played quite a good game and was close to a draw. By offering a trade of rooks on move 36 he might have felt relatively safe, and even Anand was confused briefly, but Abdusattorov had looked deeper and knew the opposite-colored bishop endgame was winning:

Maghsoodloo was the first winner of the day. The Iranian grandmaster, Abdusattorov's teammate for Viernheim last weekend (scoring 2/3), had a disappointing Wijk aan Zee tournament so he is looking to do much better in Prague.

In his first game, Maghsoodloo had no trouble equalizing against an old line from the Moscow variation played by Bartel. In fact, Black was already more comfortable by move 13, when the Polish GM forgot to open up the a-file, and after that he was just outplayed.

GM Richard Rapport was another player coming straight from the Bundesliga (scoring a win and two draws). The Hungarian-Romanian player escaped with a draw against GM Gukesh Dommaraju, who was probably welcoming the classical starting position after struggling a bit in Weissenhaus last week. The 17-year-old Indian GM missed a chance for more than half a point:

Anand just pointed out the best move 30.Ka1! at the moment Gukesh played 30.Qd3?!, which seems to give away most of the advantage! https://t.co/03u8INYEUF pic.twitter.com/8CWJeuDR9v

— chess24 (@chess24com) February 27, 2024

GM Vidit Gujrathi tried for a long time, but couldn't break GM David Navara's defenses and so the third Candidate also had to settle for a draw. All in all, an excellent start of the tournament for the spectators.

When you just don't want to make a draw... pic.twitter.com/esk4jQs4j2

— chess24 (@chess24com) February 27, 2024

Note that, as in Wijk aan Zee, there is also a Challengers tournament (and even one for kids, called Futures). There, we find a few players who were also active in the Tata Steel Challengers, as well as the youngest GM in the world Abhimanyu Mishra and Praggnanandhaa's sister GM-elect Vaishali Rameshbabu. 

Prague Challengers | Round 1 Results

The 2024 Prague Chess Festival takes place February 27-March 7 at the Don Giovanni Hotel in Prague, Czech Republic. The format is a single round-robin. The time control is 90 minutes for the first 40 moves, followed by 30 more minutes for the rest of the game, with a 30-second increment per move starting on move one.