- Saturday, May 17, 2025
In the three-way tiebreak, the first two clashes ended in tightly contested draws. However, in the decisive third game, Praggnanandhaa defeated Vachier-Lagrave to win the title
By: India Weekly
GRANDMASTER R Praggnanandhaa clinched the Superbet Classic title in Bucharest, Romania, after winning the dramatic three-way tie-break.
The 19-year-old Chennai youth held his nerve in the final game against Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, sealing a memorable win in the opening event of the Grand Chess Tour.
In the three-way tiebreak, the first two clashes – Praggnanandhaa vs Firouzja and Vachier-Lagrave vs Firouzja – ended in tightly contested draws.
However, in the decisive third game, Praggnanandhaa defeated Vachier-Lagrave to win the tile.
Earlier, Praggnanandhaa was leading the tournament before the final round. But a draw against Levon Aronian allowed Firouzja and Vachier-Lagrave to catch up by winning their last games.
Praggnanandhaa, Alireza Firouzja and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave ended the ninth and final round with 5.5 points apiece.
He did not take many chances with his pieces against Aronian who came up with an opening surprise in the form of French defense.
Employing a quite set-up, Praggnanandhaa exchanged the Queens early and the result of the game thereafter was not in any doubts as the pieces changed hands at regular intervals.
The players finally arrived at an opposite coloured Bishops endgame where the draw was agreed to after 43 moves.
Vachier-Lagrave defeated off-form Duda Jan-Krzysztof of Poland with white pieces going for complications in a Ruy Lopez game.
Duda did well to maintain the balance but a huge positional blunder on move 34 cost him dearly as his king came under massive threats by white’s heavy pieces.
Vachier-Lagrave won quite easily thereafter.
Firouzja defeated Deac Bogdan-Daniel of Romania in a keenly contested game where the Romanian seemed to have an upper hand in the middle game.
Firouzja, a master of tactics spotted a whole in white’s calculation after sacrificing an exchange and turned the tables in 54 moves.
In other matches of the day, D Gukesh played out a draw with Fabiano Caruana of United States while American Wesley So got the same result against Nodirbek Abdusattorov of Uzbekistan.
In the final rankings, Caruana finished fourth on 5 points, a half point ahead of Abdusattorov on 4.5.
Gukesh after a lot of ups and downs in the event, ended tied fifth on 4 points with Wesley, Aronian and Bogdan-Daniel.
Duda with 3 points, had to be content with the last place.
The third event of the Grand Chess Tour will be the 2025 SuperUnited Rapid & Blitz Croatia, taking place on July 1-6.
