Prague Masters Chess: R Praggnanandhaa registers first win, Arvind takes lead

National chess player R Praggnanandhaa scored a confident victory over legion Nguyen Thai Dai Van of Czech Republic whereas his fellow countryman Arvind Chithambaram bested the number one seed Wei Yi from China in the third round of the Prague Masters. He now stands alone in first place. He, one of the contestants anong the best in the tournaments, won this notable game on the 14th move.  

Praggnanandandhaa, noting the importance of his second-round stalemate, stated bluntly ‘The first round was specially good for me, whereas the second had its moments.‘ This was Praggnanandhandha’s tackle while noting that he’s never in the rounds. With compatriot Arvind Chithambaram overshadowing him, Arvind played in his very first elite tournament since breaking into the top 20 live ranked players.

Following the outstanding performance by Arvind, he now stands with a total of 2.5 points from his three games. On the other hand, Sam Shankland on one side of America fell short to Vincent Keymer on the German faction. With two points each, Japan’s Keymer and Praggnanandha are jointly in second place. In a position of shared fourth place are the Vietnamese Quang Lim Le, Czech Republic’s David Navara, Dutch Bothan Anish Giri and Shankland, all of whom are half a point above Dai Van and Turkey’s Gurel Ediz.

Wei Yi, the top seed of the tournament, is last in the standings among the ten players participating. There are still six rounds remaining in the round robin tournament. In a simultaneous game in the Challengers section, Divya Deshmukh suffered her second defeat in a span of three days when she lost to Uzbekistan's Nodirbek Yakubov.