Grand Chess Tour: Praggnanandhaa loses Game 1 to Fabiano Caruana

Indian Grandmaster R Praggnanandhaa lost to pre-event favourite Fabiano Caruana of United States in the first game of the Grand Chess Tour grand finale here.

Praggnanandhaa was completely out of sort as Caruana outplayed him bit by bit from a complex Italian opening.

Being Italian himself, Caruana probably knew a little more than the Indian and when the endgame arrived, he just had everything right clicking in favour.

Praggnanandhaa lost his case as his king was far away from defence and did not recover. The game lasted 48 moves.

With Classical victory worth six points, it’s a huge lead for Caruana already and it remains to be seen if Praggnanandhaa can match up to the American who ranks number three in the world currently.

After two Classical games, two rapid games worth four points each will be played and that will be followed by four blitz games worth two points each.

In the fight for the third place Vincent Keymer played out a draw with Wesley So in the other match of the day for this USD 450000 prize money event.

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