Indian chess prodigy R Praggnanandhaa has kept the hopes alive of creating history in the FIDA Chess World Cup final having held world champion Magnus Carlsen on to a draw after the first game. After 35 moves, the duo played out a draw on Tuesday, August 22 and will now play the second game and the decider on Wednesday, August 23.
Praggnanandhaa played with whites in the first classical game and Carlsen will play with whites in the second game on Wednesday. It ended up being a rather long yet intense battle in the first game as both players took a long time before their every move but both did lose their queens quite early.
The winner of the second classical game will win the Chess World Cup. Praggananandhaa was coming off a thrilling 3.3-2.5 win in the tie-breaker in the semi-final beating the American grandmaster Fabiano Caruana.
The final with two classical games gives two players 90 minutes for the first 40 moves and then 30 minutes for the rest of the match with 30-second incremental time for each move. However, if the second game doesn't give an outright winner, then the two players will be involved in two rapid games with control time of 10 minutes with a 10-second increment for each move. However, if those two games also don't throw up a winner, there will be two more rapid matches but the control time will reduced to five minutes and incremental time for each move will be limited to just three seconds.
Praggnanandhaa will become the youngest player to win the Chess World Cup if he manages to beat the World No. 1 Carlsen. He already became the youngest to qualify for the final and the third youngest to qualify for the Candidates tournament after the legendary Bobby Fischer and Carlsen.
