Quick Analysis: How Praggnanandhaa beat Magnus Carlsen for 2nd time in three days in Las Vegas
For the second time in the space of three days, Magnus Carlsen was forced to resign from a game by India’s Praggnanandhaa at the Las Vegas leg of the Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour. After handing Carlsen a defeat in a classification game for quarter-final spots, Praggnandhaa handed Carlsen a fresh defeat late on Saturday evening in the classification games to end up in third spot at the event. In the reverse game on Saturday, Carlsen won, thus pushing the matter into tiebreaks. The Norwegian then won the two tiebreak games against Pragg, in essence winning the tie against the Indian with three wins in a row after losing the first game.
Praggnanandhaa, playing with white pieces, forced the five-time world champion Carlsen to resign in 43 moves in the first game of the day.. It was a game played in Position No 414 in a 10-minute time control. Position 414 sees a pair of knights on one side of the king while the bishop pair is on another side and the rooks standing as sentries on their regular squares on the edge of the board. The kings too start on e squares. The starting position left plenty of room for players to fall into the trap of familiarity as a couple of moves in, the kings can castle like they do in regular chess.
But any semblance of a routine position making an appearance on the board was out the window by the fourth move itself when both players lined up their pawns to form a giant X in the middle of the board without capturing the opponent’s pawns. It almost felt as if the players had sworn to non-violence: four pawns — two from each side — stood eyeball to eyeball in the centre of the board, but neither doing much.
When the capturing of the rival’s pieces finally began, Praggnanandhaa seized an advantage on the board as per the evaluation bar as early as the 10th move. At this stage, Carlsen was lower on the clock than Praggnanandhaa as well, having 6.46 minutes compared to the Indian’s 9.11 minutes.
“Magnus is usually quite good when it comes to Freestyle openings. So it is a bit of a surprise that his position seems to be quite unpleasant and also bad,” Vincent Keymer said on the official broadcast of Freestyle Chess around this phase as the eval bar suggested that Praggnanandhaa was in an advantageous position.
One move later, Praggnanandhaa had three central pawns lined up next to each other on the fourth rank, waiting for orders to push into enemy territory and force Carlsen’s minor pieces to beat a hasty retreat.
How Praggnanandhaa beat Magnus Carlsen
On move 18, Carlsen opted to sacrifice his all-powerful queen in return for a bishop and a knight from the opposition army.
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But just when Pragg should have capitalised on the already-significant edge he enjoyed over the board against the World No 1, he erred. Praggnanandhaa pushed his queen to b2 — playing 21. Qb2 — threatening to capture Carlsen’s rook on the h8 square. It’s likely that he thought that the rook was vulnerable, but he did notice the knight that was guarding the rook.
On the next move, Carlsen picked off Praggnanandhaa’s second bishop too. The eval bar crashed towards the centre, showing that parity had been restored on the board. But it was not long before Praggnanandhaa seized an advantage again by playing the 41st move (41. Rc7).
At this stage, checkmate was unavoidable for Carlsen. Acknowledging that, the world no 1 resigned.
The result comes just three days after Praggnanandhaa beat the world no 1 from Norway in 39 moves. A subsequent defeat to Levon Aronian resulted in Carlsen being knocked out of the race for qualifying for the Winners’s Bracket.
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Praggnanandhaa was 16 when he beat Carlsen for the first time, at the Champions Chess Tour in 2022. Then, at 2024 Norway Chess came Pragg’s first classical win over Carlsen.
Carlsen started his campaign at Las Vegas with a couple of wins. However, he then sank to losses against Praggnanandhaa and Wesley So. Then there were two draws, which left him needing a win in the final round just to force a tiebreak. He beat Bibisara Assaubayeva. But then lost both playoff games to Aronian, who clinched the final qualifying spot from the White Group.
“I think it started well (on Day 1). I felt all right, relatively rested at least compared to other days. And then I don’t know, I didn’t enjoy the whole process of just being pretty isolated there for many, many hours and not being able to talk to Peter (coach Peter Heine Nielsen) or Ella (wife Ella Malone) in between rounds and not being able to use my devices and so on. What happened then was just kind of a complete collapse of my nervous system,” Carlsen told the YouTube handle of Freestyle Chess after his win over Vidit. “I could have scraped through of course with some help but it would have been completely underserved. So, it was a complete collapse and yeah, sometimes you have one bad day and I’ve had that in Freestyle before in the preliminaries, but then there’s been a bit of a wider margin to get through. This time it wasn’t. It’s not an excuse. I should make it regardless.”
