India’s teen grandmaster Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa has registered a second victory over Magnus Carlsen in the space of three years at the Las Vegas Freestyle Chess tournament.
He had previously registered a victory over the World No.1 in a classification game for the quarter-final spots, and now he has handed him a fresh defeat in the classification games to finish in third place at the event.
Praggnanandhaa, who was playing with white pieces, forced the five-time world champion Carlsen to resign in 43 moves in the first game on Saturday. On the fourth rank, the Indian grandmaster had three central pawns lined up next to each other.
On move 18, Carlsen decided to sacrifice his queen in return for a bishop and knight from Praggnanandhaa. However, the Indian failed to capitalise on the opportunity as Carlsen roared back into form. He soon picked off Praggnanandhaa’s second bishop.
Praggnanandhaa took the lead again on the 41st move. At this stage, checkmate was all but sealed for Carlsen, and hence, the World No.1 resigned.
Earlier this week, Praggnanandhaa defeated Carlsen in 39 moves at the Las Vegas Freestyle tournament. The Norwegian then suffered another loss to Levon Aronian, which knocked him out of the race to qualify for the Winners’ Bracket.
Pragnanandhaa was just 16 years old when he registered his first victory over Carlsen at the Champions Chess Tour in 2022. However, it was in 2024 that he registered his first classical win over the five-time champion at Norway Chess.
Carlsen’s campaign
Speaking of Magnus Carlsen, he began his campaign at the Las Vegas leg of the Freestyle tour with a couple of victories. However, he then faced defeats against Pragnanandhaa and Wesley So. A couple of draws later, the World No.1 was in much-needed victory zone, and he did exactly that as he got the better of Bibisara Assaubayeva.
Carlsen then lost both playoff games to Aronian, who clinched the final qualifying spot from the White Group.
“I think it started well (on Day 1). I felt all right, relatively rested, at least compared to other days. And then I don’t know, I didn’t enjoy the whole process of just being pretty isolated there for many, many hours and not being able to talk to Peter (coach Peter Heine Nielsen) or Ella (wife Ella Malone) in between rounds and not being able to use my devices and so on. What happened then was just kind of a complete collapse of my nervous system,” Carlsen told the YouTube handle of Freestyle Chess.
“I could have scraped through, of course, with some help, but it would have been completely underserved. So, it was a complete collapse, and yeah, sometimes you have one bad day, and I’ve had that in Freestyle before in the preliminaries, but then there’s been a bit of a wider margin to get through. This time it wasn’t. It’s not an excuse. I should make it regardless,” he added.