Praggnanandhaa Defeats World Champion Ding, Passes Anand To Become #1 In India
For the first time in his career, GM Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu took the number-one spot among Indian players in the live ratings on Tuesday. The 18-year-old prodigy from Chennai beat World Champion Ding Liren at the 2024 Tata Steel Chess Tournament and leapfrogged GM Viswanathan Anand.
GM Anish Giri is now the sole leader in the Masters group going into the first rest day thanks to winning deep in the endgame against GM Gukesh Dommaraju. GM Alireza Firouzja is in second place.
The Challengers group has three players on 3/4: GMs Erwin l'Ami, Hans Niemann, and Anton Korobov.
Results - Masters Round 4
Standings - Masters Round 4
Wijk aan Zee is 7886 km (4900 mi) away from Chennai, the former Madras, and today, with just a few degrees above freezing temperatures in the Netherlands, it was about 26 degrees colder too. Anand has said that he might have spent a year of his life in the Dutch winter because of all his participations in the tournament. Praggnanandhaa is playing his third tournament in as many years now, but today he achieved something historic: surpassing his big hero, from that same Chennai, in the live rankings.
Praggnanandhaa achieved it by beating none other than Ding, with the black pieces. He had done precisely the same, also in the fourth round, last year, but this time it was more special. Pragg noted that it was his first time beating a world champion in a classical game, adding: "That feels good!"
Last year in the first 4 games in Wijk aan Zee Ding Liren beat Gukesh with Black then lost to Praggnanandhaa with White — this year he's already beaten Gukesh with Black and today is again struggling vs. Pragg with White! https://t.co/0gldnEQER6 #TataSteelChess pic.twitter.com/BhSSKYqLz2
— chess24.com (@chess24com) January 16, 2024
Praggnanandhaa called it a "strange game," because it went surprisingly smoothly. "I felt I equalized very easily and then somehow things started to go wrong for him. Even after I won the pawn I felt it should be holdable."
Missing Black's 15...c4! was a sign that Ding wasn't fully focused yet, and in the remainder of the game, he wasn't able to defend as well as we might have expected.
It took many tries for Giri to finally win his first Tata Steel Chess tournament last year, and he's the favorite again after today's round. An endgame grind against Gukesh brought him to the excellent score of 3.5/4, while co-leader Firouzja could only draw today against GM Nodirbek Abdusattorov.
Giri said he was quite surprised when Gukesh played 20...Rxd3, a trick that seemed to win a pawn but was met by a countertrick. The Dutchman thought his opponent might have missed 24.Bxc6, after which he was "thrilled" to get the ensuing middlegame with opposite-colored bishops, which is more unpleasant for Black than it looks.
Deep in the endgame, not long before the end, Giri was briefly worried that it might be a fortress even after winning Black's pawns. "It shouldn't be," he said. "I've achieved so much that at this point it would be kind of unfair if it was a gonna be a fortress."
The win must have given Giri some mixed feelings: in a way, he took revenge for the fact that Gukesh took away his place in the Candidates at the last moment, but perhaps he now feels like he should have been the one going to Toronto instead.
Here's the game, annotated by GM Rafael Leitao:
The third winner of the day was GM Wei Yi, whose win was at the same time GM Parham Maghsoodloo's third loss in a row. It was a tough blow for him, as he was playing a good game which included an exchange sacrifice that his opponent hadn't seen coming.
"I think after this sacrifice, Black's position is good," said Wei. "I thought for a long time to try to find a way to be better."
Both players got into time trouble, but it was still dynamically balanced after the queens were traded on move 43. One move later, a single mistake was enough for Maghsoodloo to end up in a lost position.
During the last few moves, Maghsoodloo wasn't thinking about the position anymore, he was thinking about life. After resigning, he kept sitting at the board for a few more minutes, holding his pen, drinking his water, and looking into nowhere. We've all been there.
GM Alexander Donchenko was close to achieving an upset victory over GM Ian Nepomniachtchi despite getting a somewhat dodgy position out of the opening. The tables turned when he was allowed to play the fantastic shot 28...Rxc2!!.
"It might be a bit embarrassing to say but I did not even see it when I played 27...Rc8," said an honest Donchenko. "I just played 27...Rc8 because it's a good move."
According to the engine, White should allow a draw immediately there, but Nepomniachtchi quickly played the only move that continued the game, albeit with his opponent being the one with winning chances!
In the remainder, however, he defended very well, and showed that players of his caliber are very difficult to finish off.
"Honestly I'm a bit relieved that I didn't mess it up all the way, because it's very easy to miss the moment where you have to bail out," said Donchenko. "I thought I was maybe one or two moves away from making him resign but apparently it's not that easy."
Results - Challengers Round 4
Standings - Challengers Round 4
There were no fewer than six leaders in the Challengers after three rounds, and three of them won today to stay on top. For starters, Korobov won his third game in a row, with the white pieces against the 16-year-old French GM Marc'Andria Maurizzi.
From the moment of Black's 17th move, where he "fianchettoed" a rook, it became clear that he was going for play along the g-file. Giving up the c6-pawn was not good though, and it was Korobov's passer that was faster than Black's attack, thanks to a subtle final move:
Niemann won a good game against IM Divya Deshmukh, who quickly got into a passive position but then managed to hang on for quite a while. "It felt quite overwhelming and she had no time for 12 moves," said Niemann. "She defended quite resiliently and it was quite frustrating but once she played 38...c6 I knew that if I am not mating I am at least strategically going to win somehow."
L'Ami was worse for a long time, but somehow everything turned around at some point against 17-year-old GM Leon Luke Mendonca:
Pairings - Masters 5 (Thursday)
Pairings - Challengers Round 5 (Thursday)
The Tata Steel Chess tournament takes place January 13-28, 2024, in Wijk aan Zee, the Netherlands. The time control is 100 minutes for 40 moves followed by 50 minutes to finish each game with a 30-second increment. Both the Masters and Challengers groups are 14-player round-robin tournaments.
The live broadcast of the round, hosted by GM Daniel Naroditsky and IM Jovanka Houska.
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Peter Doggers joined a chess club a month before turning 15 and still plays for it. He used to be an active tournament player and holds two IM norms.
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