Chess: Pragg wears down Erigaisi in sudden death, enters World Cup semi-final
R Praggnandhaa becomes first Indian since Viswanathan Anand in 2002 to enter the last four of the tournament, after winning the marathon quarterfinal 5-4
R Praggnanandhaa was all set for the sudden-death blitz game. He had engaged in a bitter fight with Arjun Erigaisi, his friend and walking partner, for much of the day in the FIDE World Cup quarterfinal match in Baku, Azerbaijan on Thursday.
The first two Rapid games (25-minute time control) had ended in draws, the next two (10-minute time control) saw them both win with black pieces, and the Blitz games saw a repeat -- both winning with black again. They were locked at 4-4. That set them up for the sudden-death blitz game -- whoever won would make it to the semi-final.
Sitting in the players' lounge, the 18-year-old Praggnanandhaa was trying to get his mind off the blunder he had committed in the second of the normal blitz games when he had taken the knight instead of the rook. He had resigned a few moves later and banged his fist on the table.
But he had a look up at the clock and thought he saw five minutes remaining for the sudden-death game to start. He went to the restroom and when he came out, he discovered he was running late. By the time he made it to the board, he had lost 40 seconds, and that is never the best way to start a Blitz game.
“It was not nerves,” said Praggnanandhaa. “I saw it was saying five minutes but maybe I was mistaken. I thought I will use the restroom and lost track of time for a bit... I had to run for the game. I was washing my face and then suddenly, I was running.”
When he arrived at the board, he seemed calm though. He quickly played Nf3 to start things off and then as Erigaisi was playing his move, Praggnanandhaa removed his jacket as well.
“I was not comfortable wearing a jacket in a blitz game,” he said. “I was definitely upset losing 40 seconds... to lose 40 seconds without doing anything... but I managed to recover and was very happy when I got back on level terms.”
Well, he did more than recover. For the first time in the day, he would find some lovely rhythm with white pieces. The moves, as they like to say, simply flowed. Erigaisi had been finding inventive ways to imbalance the games all day, but this time Praggnanandhaa didn’t let go.
“After I won d5 (19. Qxd5), it was very clinical. Somehow I was not thinking about a spot in the Candidates, I was just trying to play, be confident...”
Perhaps it was this clarity of thought that mattered. The Rapid and Blitz formats rely on instinct – it comes down to that, more than anything else. So, there are sacrifices, there are blunders, there are the obvious traps that are missed. It all happens because time is a clear factor, and sometimes it forces your hand. You may or may not find the best continuation.
These players are geniuses, they calculate very quickly and have studied these positions thousands of times, but there are still limits to what they can do. This makes the games unbalanced and exciting.
And because the games come in one after another, sometimes it can be difficult to get your mind out of one and focus on the next. Perhaps that is why both players struggled to win with white. The wins in the classical section were both with black. The wins in the blitz section were with black too. So, what really was happening there?
“Not easy for both me and Arjun,” said Praggnanandhaa. “We were just fighting and not playing well with white. White was almost losing almost all the games.
“I dunno... maybe hard to find ideas with white. He plays very well with black too and has lots of variations to fall back on. I was regretting playing the main line c4, d4, Nc4... I could have played anything else. (Ahead of the final game) I was trying to calm down.”
Arjun is always posing practical problems. This forces the opponent to think and in the process gamble on time too. And this was working for him. Pragg would often look like he was ahead, only to see his friend waltz right back into the match.
The ending was as manic as chess can get. The GMs were making moves every second, every two seconds... every single turn... it was frenetic, it was mad, and at the end of it, Arjun offered his hand. He was beaten but there was no shame for he too is just getting started.
Praggnanandhaa had got the first win of the match with white pieces and if Magnus Carlsen sticks to his word, he will also be among the youngest players ever to make it to the Candidates, an eight-player tournament that decides the challenger for the World Chess Championship.
Carlsen and Carsten Fischer were both 16-and-a-half when they played their first Candidates. The youngest player to qualify for the Candidates is Carlsen though, he did that in an event (World Cup 2005) that started when he was 14-years-old, even if he had turned 15 when it finished. Either way, the young Indian is in elite company.
For now, Praggnanandhaa isn’t thinking about the Candidates or about Carlsen or Fischer. He isn’t even trying to think about chess.
“I don’t think I am going to touch chess for the next day-and-a-half,” Praggnanandhaa said. “It is exhausting physically and mentally.”
