‘Foreigners wondering what is this India’: Pranesh on GCL, Praggnanandhaa ‘rumours’, and Vaishali | Exclusive | Chess News

BENGALURU: Bengaluru’s Lalit Ashok hotel, where season 4 of the Global Chess League (GCL) is unfolding, has not been short on marquee pairings this week, but the one that turned heads on Monday belonged to a 20-year-old who wasn’t even supposed to be here. Chennai-born Grandmaster Pranesh M walked into this year’s tournament as a late replacement for Vladimir Fedoseev, slotted onto Mumba Masters’ board two, and has spent the tournament making that footnote look increasingly irrelevant, first by beating Anish Giri on the opening day, then, more strikingly, by dismantling Levon Aronian’s position from the white side of a Sicilian, punishing an over-optimistic kingside pawn push with the kind of clean, calculated finish that has become his signature.“I think in the opening I kind of outplayed him (Levon),” Pranesh told TimesofIndia.com during an exclusive conversation on the sidelines of the GCL. “He went for g5, slightly a mistake, but I don’t know what else he could have done. It just looked so bad for him. I had clear plans, and it’s hard to play faster than one moves.”Board 2, he says, hasn’t intimidated him the way some might expect from a teenager thrown in among a field this strong. “I’m just feeling really happy. I think I can actually compete with them,” he added with a smile.In August, just before joining his GCL side, Pranesh won the Kanizsa Open in Hungary outright, going unbeaten across nine rounds to push his rating into the world’s top 50.It capped a stretch that began, less visibly, in Cyprus, where he spent weeks not playing for himself at all, but working as GM Vaishali Rameshbabu’s second and training partner through her run to the Women’s Candidates title.From an 1800-rated player to Vaishali’s trusted confidantVaishali and her coach RB Ramesh have been candid about why Pranesh was brought into that camp in the first place. Vaishali, for all her poker-faced reputation at the board, takes losses hard, and Ramesh and his wife Aarthie wanted someone around who could keep the mood light. Pranesh’s own account of the job is characteristically low-key, though.“Mainly Vaishali akka gets really serious during the game, and after the game she’ll be wondering where she made a mistake,” Pranesh revealed. “I’ll just tell her, don’t care; even if you don’t blunder, you’ll win the tournament. There were a lot of blunders in that tournament, so. I was just being myself.”During the Candidates, he was around Vaishali; in the broader Chess Gurukul ecosystem, he grew up alongside players such as Praggnanandhaa and Aravindh Chithambaram. His relationship with Vaishali goes back years, to a time when he was rated nowhere near where he is now.“I went with Vaishali because I have known her for a long time,” he said. “Even when I was like 1800, she was still going with Ramesh sir.”Was there any particular trick the youngster used to keep her calm? he replied with a chuckle, “It (the tendency to be funny around close ones) is natural now. I think from a young age, I kind of developed it. I don’t know. I was just being myself.”It wasn’t only Vaishali’s tournament that mattered to him that fortnight. Her brother, Praggnanandhaa, entered the men’s Candidates as India’s only hope before finishing second-last in the standings. The margin between the two campaigns is not lost on anyone who follows Indian chess closely.Pranesh, asked directly whether the mood inside the camp shifted after Pragg’s result, waved off any suggestion of tension, adding, “It’s just normal. There’s nothing different between the performance and everything.”He was equally quick to shut down reports that he’d been formally part of Pragg’s team as well. “Not really, it’s just rumours. I was just part of Vaishali’s team. But I was talking with both of them,” he remarked.That mix of steadiness and self-deprecation runs through most of how Pranesh talks about this year. He credits a recent training block under Ramesh, alongside the likes of R Praggnanandhaa and Aravindh Chithambaram.

“The purpose was to make us stronger,” Pranesh, who is now rated 2674 and aiming to cross 2700, said. “Each class will be really some difficult puzzles and some interesting puzzles also, to make some decisions and everything.”Will Pranesh join Vaishali for her Women’s World Championship match? As far as his time in Bengaluru so far is concerned, the GCL bubble itself has clearly left an impression, mostly for reasons that have nothing to do with chess. He described the phenomenon of Indian crowds chanting for players as something that visibly rattles foreign competitors.“The foreigners are just wondering what is this India,” he said, recalling a conversation with his own American teammate, GM Carissa Yip. “She told me she’s never seen something like this in the US.“Every strong player is coming and playing here, and even Magnus (Carlsen) is playing here. That is a big achievement.”Also Read: Pranesh M, son of anganwadi worker, is India’s top chess grandmasterAnd, lastly, when asked about the chances of him joining Vaishali for her upcoming Women’s World Championship match, he couldn’t stop laughing before murmuring, “Maybe, but I don’t know. First of all, I don’t know when the dates will be released.”