Chess with Errol

Caruana scores big at London Chess Classic

At the 2017 World Junior Championships which were held from November 13-25 in Italy, Indian child chess prodigy 12-year-old Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa (in photo) captured his first grandmaster norm by placing fourth in the Championship. Three grandmaster norms are required to obtain the full title of grandmaster in chess. Pragg is on track to smash a record held by Sergey Karjakin of Russia as the youngest chess grandmaster in history. He has three months in which to secure the two additional norms for him to become the new record holder. (Photo: Amruta Mokal)
At the 2017 World Junior Championships which were held from November 13-25 in Italy, Indian child chess prodigy 12-year-old Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa (in photo) captured his first grandmaster norm by placing fourth in the Championship. Three grandmaster norms are required to obtain the full title of grandmaster in chess. Pragg is on track to smash a record held by Sergey Karjakin of Russia as the youngest chess grandmaster in history. He has three months in which to secure the two additional norms for him to become the new record holder. (Photo: Amruta Mokal)
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The world’s number three chess player, American grandmaster Fabiano Caruana, unfastened the deadlock of draws which had been plaguing the London Chess Classic for an interminable three rounds. Caruana was the only person to score the full point in the fourth round by beating Russian grandmaster Sergey Karjakin. The other four games were drawn.

In the following round, Caruana outplayed former world chess champion Viswanathan Anand from India to complete two magnificent victories against two of the most brilliant players of the day.

American chess grandmaster Fabiano Caruana (in photo), scored two sensational victories in successive rounds at the London Chess Classic tournament last week against two of the world’s leading chess players. Successive wins against elite players in the same tournament are rare and considered a novelty. Caruana comfortably defeated Russia’s Sergey Karjakin and India’s Viswanathan Anand to assume the lead in the Classic by an enviable one full point. The London Chess Classic ends tomorrow. (Photo: Lennart Ootes)

Caruana and Karjakin will be participating in the Candidates tournament in March 2018 in Berlin. The big prize winner in that tournament gets the chance to challenge world chess champion Magnus Carlsen for the title.

Carlsen played a comprehensive game against American Wesley So in the London Classic, and, according to chess analysts, emerged with a winning endgame. However, he failed to convert the ending into a win. The game was drawn.

In other news, the column has been following the exploits of Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa of India who is intending to become the youngest chess grandmaster in history. At the World Junior Chess Championships recently, Pragg gained his first grandmaster norm. He requires three to become a full-fledged chess grandmaster, and has until March to become the youngest grandmaster ever. Karjakin currently holds the record.

There is a kind of charm when a child becomes a chess grandmaster, and it gives the country that produces the grandmaster a kind of intellectual prominence.

 

 

 

 

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