Exclusive: 'I have surprised myself', says India's giant-slaying chess genius Praggnanandhaa

R Praggnandhaaa, the mind-work and legwork involved is the kind of life he loves living. Who would complain if the incentive of all that comes in the form of checkmating the world champion? World number one Magnus Carlsen, number 10 Anish Giri and number 22 Wei Yi are names who recently found it tough to read the mind of India's chess wizkid Rameshbabu Praggnandhaa, 'Praggu' to his close ones. At the Chessable Masters last week, he beat all of them in the knockouts, before taking the battle in the final against world number two Ding Liren down to the wire. The Indian genius lost the title-clash in the blitz tiebreak. Soon after that, close to the wee hours of the morning, the next thing on Praggu's mind was his 'Computer Application' examination at school in a few hours.

(TOI Photo)The 16 year old spoke to TimesofIndia.com in an exclusive interview, where he talked about his experience of beating Magnus Carlsen again, the support he gets from Viswanathan Anand, juggling academics with his gruelling chess schedule and more. The second youngest in the history of the game to become a Grandmaster, Praggu didn't initially expect his exam dates to clash with his chess, because he didn't expect to be in the final of the Chessable Masters. "I definitely surprised myself," he told TimesofIndia.com in this special interview. Excerpts...Q. This year is turning out to be a landmark season for you so far. Did you expect this?The year is still going on and I would like to play even better. This year, I think this tournament (Chessable Masters) has been one of the good tournaments. I also played well in the Oslo Esports Cup last month (finished fourth). So the past few months have been better. I am playing some good chess.

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