CHESS PRODIGY

Praggnanandhaa

Pragg began playing chess when he was three years old because his sister Vaishali had a TV addiction and her parents wanted to wean her off the tube.

Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa (Pragg), a 17-year-old boy, has become a well-known figure in indoor sports. He is a grandmaster of Indian chess. He is a chess prodigy who earned the title of International Master at the age of ten and the title of Grandmaster at the age 12, becoming the second youngest player at the time to do so. On 20 February 2022, he proved that ‘age is just a number’ by defeating current world champion Magnus Carlse in the eighth round of the rapid game of the Airthings Masters Rapid Chess Tournament.

Praggnanandhaa was born in a middle-class family on August 10, 2005 in Chennai, Tamil Nadu. His father, Rameshbabu, is a TNSC bank branch manager, and his mother, Nagalakshmi, is a housewife. He is the younger brother of R. Vaishali, a female grandmaster and international master. In Chennai, he attends Velammal Nexus School. Pragg began playing chess when he was three years old because his sister Vaishali had a TV addiction and her parents wanted to wean her off the tube. So her parents tried chess, and Pragg followed suit. Rameshbabu and Nagalakshmi committed them to the best coaching Chess Gurukul by world’s best coach R.Ramesh when their chess knowledge became obvious.

Praggnanandhaa earned the title of FIDE master at the age of seven by winning the Youth Chess Championship Under -8 title in 2013 and thus began his life’s journey to success. In 2015, he won the Under-10 title.

Pragg became the youngest international master in history in 2016 at the age of ten years, ten months, and nineteen days, and he earned the first grandmaster norm at the World Junior Chess Championship in 2017 by finishing fourth with eight points. On April 17, 2018, he received his second norm at the Heraklion Fischer Memorial GM norm tournament in Greece. By defeating Luca Moroni in the eighth round of the Gredine Open in Urtijei, Italy, at the age of 12 years, 10 months, and 13 days, he earned the third and final norm and became the second youngest Grandmaster ever, trailing only Sergey Karjakin, who attained the title at the age of 12 years and 7 months. He is the fifth youngest Grandmaster (GM) in history, following Abhimanyu Mishra, Sergey Karjakin, Gukesh D, and Javokhir Sindarov.

Making of the Champion Par Excellence

Praggnanandhaa was invited to a four-game rapid match against Westley So in 2018. Pragg defeated So in the first game, and the score was tied at 1½1½ after three games. Unfortunately, Pragg was defeated by So in the final round, 2½-1½. But this defeat could not deter him. Praggnanandhaa tied for third place with grandmaster Alder Escobar Forero and international master Denys Shemlov in the Charlotte Chess Centre’s Winter 2018 GM norm in Charlotte, North Carolina, in January 2018.

Praggnanandhaa won the Xtracon Open in Denmark in July 2019 with a score of 8½/10 points, and he hasn’t looked back since, continuing his successful journey. On October 12, 2019, he won the World Youth Championships in the Under-18 category with a score of 9/11. He became the second youngest person to achieve a rating of 2600 in December 2019, at the age of 14 years, 3 months, and 24 days.

Julius Baer Group and Chess24.com organized a rapid online event for young talents in April 2021.

Praggnanandhaa won the Polgar challenge, the first (of four) legs of the Julius Baer Challengers Chess Tour, with a score of 15.5/19, 1.5 points better than the next best competitor. Following this victory, on April 24, 2021, he qualified for the Meltwater Champions Chess Tour, finishing in 10th place with a score of 7/15(+4-5=6), including wins over Teimour Radjabov, Jan Krzysztof Duda, Sergey Karjakin, and Johansebastian Christiansen, and a draw against the world champion Magnus Carlsen.

2021 as the 90th seed and defeated grandmaster Gabriel Sargissian by 2-0 in Round 2 and grandmaster Michal Krasenkow in rapid tie breaks in Round 3. Maxime Vachier- Lagrave eliminated Praggnanandhaa in Round 4. He also competed in the Masters Section of the Tata Steel Chess Tournament 2022, where he defeated Andrey Esipenko, Vidit Gujrathi, and Nils Grandelius, finishing in 12th place with a total score of 5½.

A Living Legend

Praggnanandhaa made history by defeating the World Champion Magnus Carlsen in the Online Airthings Masters Rapid Tournament of the Champions Chess Tour 2022 on February 20th. With this victory, Praggnanandhaa became the third Indian player to defeat the World Champion, following Anand and Harikrishna. In May 2022, at the Chessable Masters Online Rapid Chess Tournament, he defeated Carlsen for the second time in three months, and with this victory, Praggnanandhaa advanced to the finals. In the FTX Crypto Cup 2022, he also defeated Carlsen three times. However, he could only finish second in the overall standings.

Praggnanandhaa was asked by a media outlet how he planned to celebrate his victory in February 2022. “I think it’s just about going to bed,” he replied. He has only just begun his path to success, but has made India proud. He has demonstrated that age is irrelevant. We should take lessons from him. We should appreciate all of our country’s children and instill in them the belief that they can achieve anything if they work hard and with all of their hearts.

Praggnanandhaa entered the Chess World Cup

Celebrating EK Bharat Shreshtha Bharat its True Spirit

Through the organised activities, the students learned about languages spoken in different regions, nature and structure of tribal languages.

On December 11, 2022, National Book Trust celebrated Bhartiya Bhasha Diwas its Headquarters in New Delhi and simultaneously in all offices across the country. A Speech Contest was organised at the Kashi Tamil Sangamam on the theme of “Shared Knowledge – Shared Traditions” which saw enthusiastic participation from many school and college students in Hindi and Tamil. The students talked about the common thread in literature and culture joining all parts of the country as one entity, and adding to the spirit of Ek Bharat Shreshtha Bharat.

Yuvraj Malik, Director, NBT-India, addressed young students and talked in detail about Bhartiya Bhasha Diwas and the 140th birth anniversary of

Subrahmania Bharati. He spoke of the importance of knowing multiple languages as an aid for the nation’s development, building unity, and realising the goal of Ek Bharat Shreshtha Bharat. He encouraged them to take pride in their mother tongue, and also learn other Indian languages to communicate better with their fellow countrymen.

Various events were simultaneously organised in Regional offices of NBT-India located in Mumbai, Kolkata, and Bengaluru as well as at all Book Promotion Centres and Bookshops across Lucknow, Guwahati, Imphal, Agartala, Cuttack, Dehradun, Patna, Bhopal, Hyderabad, and Kochi, as well as in Delhi Metro bookshops, to celebrate all Indian languages and to emphasise the importance of knowing more than one language. Children read books in their mother tongue and the official State language, and participated in storytelling and story-writing competitions.

Through the organised activities, the students learned about languages spoken in different regions, nature and structure of tribal languages, to say commonly spoken phrases and sentences in every major language of India, and also learn about the rich literature of these languages. More than 1000 students participated in this celebration of languages across the country at more than 16 NBT-India stores.

Under the Ek Bharat Shreshtha Bharat programme, all centres of NBT-India in different States were paired with each other to enhance interaction and promote mutual understanding between people of different States/UTs. Students interacted with each other through video calls and taught each other words in their respective languages.

NBT-India also visited the NCERT Campus at Sri Aurobindo Marg, New Delhi with its Mobile Exhibition Van (MEV) showcasing a variety of titles published across genres in more than 50 languages. While inaugurating the Mobile Exhibition Prof. Dinesh Prasad Saklani, Director, NCERT commended the efforts of NBT-India in making books available in multiple Indian languages for readers across the country.