Chess: Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa reaches final at 2am on day of his exams

India’s 16-year-old Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa jumped into the world elite this week when the Tamil Nadu teenager reached the final of the online $150,000 Chessable Masters by bold attacking play. It was the latest and most significant success yet for the former prodigy, who became the youngest ever international master at 11 and narrowly missed the youngest grandmaster title at 12.

The epic quality of the schoolboy’s feat was underlined in his post-match interview after defeating the Netherlands world No 9, Anish Giri, in Tuesday’s semi-final. He calmly stated that it was now 2am on Wednesday in Chennai and that he had to be at school at 8.45am to take his 11th-year board exam in commerce before playing China’s world No 2, Ding Liren, that same evening in the two-day final. “Winning the match would be much nicer than passing the exam,” he said.

Later in the day he said: “It went decently, I guess I will pass.” But the final against Ding proved much harder. Their rapid match ended level at 4-4 before Ding won the blitz tie-break 1.5-0.5.

Ding, whose chess activity since 2020 has been much reduced by the pandemic, achieved his own milestone in the semi-final when he defeated Magnus Carlsen 2.5-1.5, winning their fourth game after three draws. Previously Ding had lost four online Tour semi-finals and a third place playoff to the world No 1.

Tuesday’s game four was decided late on when Carlsen missed the chance for an unusual fortress draw by 39…g3! blocking the position instead of 39…Kg7? 40 Bh4! followed by Bg5 when Ding’s attack broke through.

Ding’s approach to the final against Praggnanandhaa was to defuse his young opponent’s attacking ambitions. “My strategy was to avoid complications and go for simple positions,” he said. The reality had difficulties, both on and off the board. Ding played from his home in Wenzhou in the small hours, finishing at 5am in Chinese time, and the 29-year-old was bothered by mosquitoes and flies throughout the match.

His best game was the first, where he unleashed a move 14 Queen’s Gambit Declined novelty then rolled his queen’s side pawn majority down the board for a winning position. Praggnanandhaa fought back strongly on the second day, and missed a winning chance which could have swung the match in the first five-minute blitz tie-break game.

The teenager from Chennai is the leader of an gifted Indian generation, which also includes Arjun Erigaisi, 18, who outclassed the 2022 Wijk Masters, and Dommaraju Gukesh, who was the second youngest grandmaster ever at 12 and who at 15 this spring has won three strong international tournaments in a row.

The Chessable Masters is the fourth of nine events in the $1.6m Meltwater Champions Tour. Carlsen won the first two tournaments, and Poland’s Jan-Krzysztof Duda the third.

Carlsen’s loss to Ding was a rare setback for the champion, who this summer will renew his attempt to reach an all-time record 2900 rating points in over-the-board play, starting with the Stavanger elite tournament which begins on Tuesday 31 May. The 31-year-old will then lead Norway’s team at the 150-nation Olympiad at Chennai in July-August, followed by the traditional Sinquefield Cup at St Louis in September.

Carlsen has also established a niche for himself in offbeat first moves, a genre in which the world champion has previous form. In October 2020 he shocked Wesley So in an online blitz final by choosing 1 f3 and Kf2, a sequence made famous 20 years earlier when an unidentified computer user tricked Nigel Short into believing that he was playing Bobby Fischer.

Then, in last month’s Oslo Esports final, Carlsen repeated 1 f3 against Duda, this time with the sequence 1…e5 2 Nc3 Nf6 3 e4 Bc5 4 Na4 Be7 5 d4 when the game was eventually drawn. Commentators were aghast, and one suggested that the No 1 deserved to lose for such a choice. Novices are warned against 1 f3 because it weakens White’s king on two diagonals and deprives the g1 knight of its normal development square.

Carlsen said: “I’ve been trying to experiment to see what first moves you can make playable. I’ve been trying to play creatively in online events and I intend to continue that once in a while. I think it’s been working pretty well in getting my opponents out of the book.”

This week, in the preliminary rounds and quarter-finals of the Chessable Masters, Carlsen drastically broadened his first move repertoire, winning with the Saragossa 1 c3, the Mieses 1 d3, and the Bird 1 f4, but his most controversial moment came with 1 h4 against China’s No 2, Wei Yi.

The move 1 h4 is so offbeat that it does not have a single recognised name, However, advancing your h2 pawn in the opening or middle game to attack your opponent’s castled black king, whether or not your own king is castled, has become such a routine weapon due to the influence of computer programs that 1 h4 could reasonably be called Harry the h pawn Accelerated.

The opening went 1 h4 d5 2 d4 c5 3 e3 Nc6 4 c4 e6. Queens were exchanged on move 10, and Carlsen should have scored in that game, too, but he mishandled a rook ending and Wei escaped with half a point.

Could we now see the world champion trying 1 g4?!, the move championed for decades by the English IM Michael Basman and his book The Killer Grob? Unlikely. After his draw with Wei, Carlsen dampened expectations: “1 g4 is a lot worse than 1 h4.”

3817: 1...Ne5+! 2 Nxe5 Bf5+ 3 Kh5 Kg7+ 4 Bh6 Rxh6 mate. If 2 Kh4 Kg8+! 3 Nxh8 Bxg5 mate.