GM R. Praggnanandhaa held his fort against reining World Champion and compatriot D. Gukesh for a come-from-behind win in the tiebreaks to claim the Tata Steel Masters 2025 in Wijk aan Zee on Sunday.
Praggnanandhaa only needed a draw in the final (13th) round against Germany’s Vincent Keymer to seal the tournament win after another co-leader ahead of the final round, Gukesh, lost his game against Arjun Erigaisi.
However, the German prodigy gets the better of Praggnanandhaa, ensuring Gukesh gets a second shot for the title.
In the tiebreaks, there was huge drama typical of two young players looking to win each and every game they played in the tournament.
Praggnanandhaa faced the Benoni with reversed colours in the first game of the tiebreak and it seemed like he had equalised easily in the middle game. However, Gukesh had other thoughts as he kept trying and won, thanks to a blunder by Praggnanandhaa that cost him a full rook.
In a must-win second game of the tiebreaker, Praggnanandhaa employed the Trompowsky opening, and this time Gukesh could claim a slight advantage with his black pieces.
However, by just keeping his position together, Praggnanandhaa patiently waited and capitalised on an unforced error from his opponent to first knock down a pawn and then his technical abilities were enough to see the normal blitz games through with a 1-1 score.
This took the match into sudden-death, where Praggnanandhaa drew white and once again Gukesh was better with some imaginative play on the queen side that netted him a pawn.
The sudden-death had a time control of two minutes and thirty seconds for white against three for black but that did not deter Praggnanandhaa from trying to defend an inferior endgame.
Just while the position looked completely drawn and another game was on the cards, Gukesh lost complete control in the battle of nerves and first lost a pawn then his last remaining knight.
ALSO READ | Gukesh suffers first defeat as World Champion, loses to compatriot Arjun Erigaisi at Tata Steel Masters
Praggnanandhaa showed perfect technique to take the full point and his maiden victory at the Masters.
For Gukesh, this was the second year running when he tied for first position and lost the tiebreaker. Gukesh had lost to Chinese Wei Yi in the previous edition last year.
In the Challengers section, Czech Republic’s Thai Dai Van Nguyen pipped Azerbaijan’s Aydin Suleymanli with a marginally better tiebreak score than the latter. With this win, he also secured a spot for himself in the Masters event of 2026.
R. Vaishali finished ninth with an impressive score of 6.0/13 while Divya Deshmukh could only manage a second last place in a field of 14 players with a 3.5/13 score.
(With inputs from PTI)
