Vijk Aan Ji (Netherlands). Grandmaster Rameshbabu Pragyananda did not imagine such a ‘strange day’ with an eight -hour world -class demonstration, after which he won his first Tata Steel Chess title by defeating the current world champion D Gukesh. Pragyananda said after the match, “It was very long, about eight hours, the first bet lasted for about six and a half hours and then Blitz Baji, it was a strange day.” “This is a very special competition in the world of chess and I have seen this tournament growing up.”
The Indian Grandmaster said, “I think in my game it showed that I was quite ambitious about trying to fight in all the arms, so we saw many results.” Pragyananda won six bets and played five draws. He suffered defeat in two arms. Regarding his future plans, Pragyananda said that he would compete in Prague Masters.
He said, “I knew what went wrong in the last six months and I knew what I needed to work on. I will keep trying to get better in it. I changed some things for this tournament (in my game) and did this. ”Out of the first two arms of the tiebreaker, Pragyananda lost one and then won the second game. He said that he should have drawn the first bet. Gukesh was in good position in the second bet but gradually he fell behind.
In the third and decisive Baji, Pragyananda again took a defensive stance with his white pieces but then made some good moves and Gukesh became very ambitious after that and defeated the probably drew. Talking about his mistakes in the game lost against Germany’s Vincent Kimar, Pragyananda admitted that he did some strange acts. He said, “I loved that situation (middle -time game) and then I started doing some strange acts. At this time I saw that Gukesh had lost but then I could not do anything except sitting and waiting in this situation. I could not give up, I could not do any trick. I just had to wait and suffer pain. It was very disappointing.
