CHENNAI: R Praggnanandhaa made it to his first Meltwater Champions Chess Tour final in sensational style. The 16-year-old displayed tremendous skillset and tenacity to defeat Anish Giri in the Chessable Masters semifinal. Anish had gone into the match unbeaten and in red-hot form having topped the $150,000 event's Prelim stage leaderboard. But the 29-year-old ran into one of the world's top talents truly coming of age.
Praggu's splendid performance set up a mouth-watering clash with the new world no.2 Ding Liren who also pulled off a shock to down the world no.1 and Tour leader Magnus Carlsen. Incredibly, schoolboy Praggu has something equally important to do first on Wednesday morning --- to write his Class XI exams. "I have to be at school around 8:45am," he said. "And now it's 2am!"
