Praggnanandhaa punished Magnus Carlsen for unjustified risks, is on his way to the top: Viswanathan Anand

Praggnanandhaa's eyes were firmly on the chequered black and white board on his computer screen, the chess pieces on it and the man with the mouse on the other side of the globe, world champion Magnus Carlsen, who started pulling his hair off as the teenager from India cornered him into submission. It was Move 32. Carlsen held the advantage of playing with white pieces and moving first, opening with the Queen's Gambit. But he moved his knight, and things changed. Praggu, as Praggnanandhaa is fondly called, termed it an error, and a "crucial" one. Seven moves later, Carlsen's resignation was final. Praggnanadhaa had become only the third Indian, after Viswanathan Anand and P Harikrishna, to shake hands with Carlsen as the winner at the end of a game in tournament play.

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Since June 2018, R Praggnanandhaa has been counted among the elite in chess. But the 16-year-old Chennaiite’s biggest moment arrived in the early hours of Monday when he beat World champion Magnus Carlsen in Round 8 of the Airthings Masters, a 16-player online rapid tournament.

Most in the country were asleep when one of India's finest young chess brains created history. He woke his father up to break the news to him, messaged coach RB Ramesh and enjoyed a few hours of sound sleep before social media started buzzing with his achievement. The New York Times wrote: "The man he had just defeated, world champion Magnus Carlsen of Norway, was tending to the wounds of his shocking loss somewhere offline. Pragg had just become the youngest person to defeat Carlsen, 31, since he became world champion in 2013."

(Praggu with his family and Indian cricketer Ravichandran Ashwin - Photo: @rpragchess Twitter)It