What’s the story?
Indian chess legend Viswanathan Anand lauded young Indian prodigy R Praggnanandhaa, earlier on Tuesday at a press conference in Mumbai.
The former world chess champion, Anand, heaped praise on the 11-year-old as he said, “He’s attracted worldwide attention. He’s a very famous Indian chess player right now. Somehow he’s captured everyone’s imagination. But there’s still a lot of time for him to progress, and I hope that he’ll do it steadily. He’s showing very good signs of progress, but it’s a long hard road (ahead).”
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Earlier last year, Praggnanandhaa became the youngest ever International Master (IM) after a commendable performance in Cannes, Moscow and in Bhubaneshwar. The Chennai boy first shot to the limelight by winning the World Youth Chess Championships’ Under-8 boys title back in 2013 when he was just seven years old. In 2015, he won the championships in the under-10 category.
The heart of the matter
Anand, who was in the city for a promotional event of the IIFL Chess tournament to be held in Mumbai, firmly believes that becoming an IM at such a young age will only help the youngster in future endeavours and open a lot of doors.
He said, “As you know, the problem for youngsters is finding the right tournaments to play and getting a chance to compete. And for him, if this opens a lot of doors, it’s nice. Which is why I think the junior tournament (IIFL) is a very healthy initiative.”
“They need a chance to compete exactly at that age, and to interact with top players. I don’t think it should be a problem for him, and I think he will take the chance to play and do well.”
Anand also spoke about his performances in 2016. Last year was a disappointing year for him. Apart from winning the Champions Showdown chess tournament held in St. Louis, United States and the Leon Masters Rapid tournament, he didn’t have much success.
“It was a slightly disappointing end of the year for me, but it’s a very tough tournament. Normally you may have one bad day. But here you could have nine bad days or 11 bad days, depending on the number of rounds,” the 47-year-old claimed.
What next?
The champion drew positives from his 2016 season and said that he would work on his mistakes to try and improve his performances in 2017. “I won’t think about it too much. Mostly the year has been positive, but I will certainly look at the mistakes that I’ve made and try to work on them.”
Sportskeeda’s take
For Praggnanandhaa, there is still a long way to go. Only time will tell whether the youngster realises his true potential and becomes a champion like Anand. If he does, India finally will have a true successor to Viswanathan Anand.
