Praggnanandhaa Receives Hero's Welcome After Historic Achievement

R Praggnanandhaa, who won the Tata Steel Chess title recently, arrived in Chennai on Tuesday. Hundreds of fans and officials of the Tamil Nadu government greeted him with thunderous applause.

In the battle of age, the reigning World Champion and his compatriot D Gukesh were destroyed by 19-year-old Pragg for his first Tata Steel Chess championship.

Pragg stated, "I feel very happy to win this tournament, and it is very nice to see that two Indians, two Tamil Nadu people played in the tie-break in the end. We both played well. Huge congratulations to him (D Gukesh) as well, he played really well."

Praggnanandhaa and Gukesh had finished on 8.5 points after losing their 13th-round games, but with strong mental resolve Praggnanandhaa managed to win against Gukesh 2-1 in 87th tiebreaker of this prestigious event at Wijk Aan Zee.

After Viswanathan Anand, Praggnanandhaa is the first Indian to win the Tata Steel Chess Championship.

Anand is a three-time winner of the event (2003, 2004, and 2006) when it was named the Corus Chess Tournament and has shared honours on two occasions (1989 and 1998) when it was formerly known as the Hoogovens Tournament.

According to Praggnanandhaa, the final day was, "crazy and long," with one nerve-wracking challenge following another before Praggnanandhaa prevailed over Gukesh in a nail-biting tiebreaker.

He showed himself by recovering from an early error which had thrown the opening game of the tiebreaker against him. Forcing Praggnanandhaa to adopt a must-win situation, the youngster selected Trompowsky opening, thereby forcing it to go to sudden death.

As the game headed towards a draw in the sudden death game, Gukesh lost his control, and Praggnanandhaa capitalized on the error to win his first title.

Praggnanandhaa will next be seen in action at the Prague Masters which starts from February 25 to March 7.