Top News

Indian Grandmaster R Praggnanandha has won the Grand Chess Tour title by performing brilliantly in St. Louis, America. With this victory, he has become the first Indian chess player to win this prestigious title. In the final, he created history by defeating defending champion Fabiano Caruana.

Tezzbuzz Desk– This victory of R Praggyanand is also special because at one time in the final he was trailing Caruana by 6 points. After the classical matches, Praggnanand's score was 3-9 and it seemed that the title was out of his hands. However, after this he made a tremendous comeback and changed the course of the entire match.

Praggnanand won both the rapid games consecutively to take the score to 11-9. After this, Caruana won the second game of blitz and the score became equal at 12-12. Despite the pressure, Praggnanand continued to play brilliantly and took the lead again by winning the third blitz match.

Pragyanand needed only a draw in the last match to win the title. He achieved the draw through three-fold repetition and with this captured the Grand Chess Tour trophy. In total 6 matches of the final, Pragyanand registered 3 wins, while 2 matches were drawn and he had to face defeat in only 1 match.

After this historic victory, Pragyanand said that it was not at all easy to eliminate the difference of 6 points. He attributed the improvement in rapid and blitz formats to his success. According to Pragyanand, his game has improved a lot in both these formats as compared to last year, which gave him the advantage in this match.

With this title win, Pragyanand not only created history but also won a huge prize money. As the winner of the Grand Chess Tour, he has received prize money of 2 lakh dollars i.e. about Rs 1.91 crore. Apart from this, he has also qualified directly for the Grand Chess Tour of 2027.

Talking about Pragyanand's earnings in the year 2026, so far he has won prize money of about 4.04 lakh dollars i.e. about Rs 4 crore in the entire circuit. This year has been full of achievements for him and the Grand Chess Tour title has become one of the biggest successes of his career.