India’s teen chess prodigy Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa yesterday arrived home to celebration, with media jostling to catch a glimpse of the newly minted star who faced international No.1 Magnus Carlsen in the World Cup final.
Popularly known as “Pragg,” the 18-year-old is the youngest player to reach a chess World Cup final, held last week in the Baku, Azerbaijan.
Pragg finished with the silver after losing to Carlsen in a nail-biting tiebreak at the International Chess Federation (FIDE) final.
Photo: AFP
He earned praise from chess legend Garry Kasparov who said that Pragg was “very tenacious in difficult positions.”
Yesterday, Pragg was greeted by hordes of supporters who handed him bouquets of flowers and sweets as he emerged from the airport in his home city of Chennai in southern India.
“I am very happy to see so many people have come to receive me ... it feels really great,” he said, as he stood shyly waving from the sunroof of a vehicle, with a purple and gold scarf draped around his neck.
Such adulation is usually reserved in India for cricket stars, who enjoy celebrity status.
The son of a bank employee and a housewife, the grandmaster has been playing the sport since he was four.
Pragg’s success has been fueled by the cooking of his mother, R. Nagalakshmi, who accompanies him on chess tournaments with pots and southern Indian seasonings to make his favorite meal of rice and spicy rasam or sambhar soup.
Nagalakshmi on Tuesday told ChessBase India that she had made rice and sambhar for Pragg at the FIDE World Rapid Team Championship in Dusseldorf, Germany, that followed the Baku event.
Pragg’s first coach, S. Thiagarajan, who began teaching him at age four, said his student was always dedicated.
“He was always a bright student and a jovial child,” said Thiagarajan, who coached him at his academy until he was 10.
“He used to be in the academy every day from 10am to 7pm, at times staying longer — and I would give him homework which would take at least three hours to finish,” he said.
In 2018 — aged just 12 years, 10 months and 13 days — Pragg became the world’s then second-youngest chess grandmaster.
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