‘I’m Surprised’: Levon Aronian on weakness Praggnanandhaa fixed to win India’s historic GCT title | Exclusive | Chess News
NEW DELHI: A year ago, American Grandmaster Levon Aronian beat Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa in their third-place match at the Grand Chess Tour (GCT) Finals in São Paulo, Brazil. Playing fast-paced chess, he gradually came to understand one thing. Blitz and rapid, the Armenian great had apprehended, were the young Indian’s soft spots.Last Thursday in St Louis, that same soft spot helped Praggnanandhaa script history.He beat Fabiano Caruana 15-13 in the GCT Finals, becoming the first Indian and only the seventh player in the event’s 11-year history to lift the title, pocketing $200,000 in the process.He got there by winning both rapid games in the final before holding a four-game blitz section to a 4-4 draw, the exact terrain Aronian once flagged as his weakness.“After last year’s GCT finals, where I beat him, I thought that blitz and rapid are his weak points, and that should be exploited. And to be honest, I’m surprised. I think he made good progress in those aspects,” Aronian, who remains one of the most respected voices in the chess world, told TimesofIndia.com ahead of the new Global Chess League (GCL) season in Bengaluru, where he will represent the Ganges Grandmasters this September.
GM Levon Aronian will return to GCL after playing and winning the inaugural edition of the tournament in 2023.
It’s a rare thing for one elite player to publicly credit another for closing a gap that was, not long ago, exploited to beat them. “You have to compliment and congratulate somebody who’s working hard to fix their weaknesses,” the 43-year-old Grandmaster said. “So I’m happy for him because he’s a fighter and he’s a very likeable person.”Aronian isn’t the only voice from the sport’s old guard taking notice.Earlier, Viswanathan Anand, who returns to the board with Alaskan Knights for this year’s GCL, went further still in a separate conversation with this website, calling Praggnanandhaa the best player right now.“In Norway Chess, he was not doing well. At some point, there were four rounds left, and he was in the bottom. And then he won four games in a row,” Anand explained.“He did something similar here, though his performance was much better in Grand Chess Tour and also in the Rapid. He won the Rapid, did well enough in the Blitz to win the tournament. Then he was sort of competing for first place here.“He has this capacity, and it’s becoming more and more noticeable that he’s able to win late games and change everything. And that’s a very, very rare skill and useful skill to have.”Read also: Amid ‘very long meetings’ and running chess world, has Viswanathan Anand lost ‘hunger’ to win? | Exclusive“I think at the moment, I would say he’s the number one player in the world,” Anand opined, pointing to the same capacity for turnarounds that Aronian’s comments now echo from the losing end of one.“Well, Magnus (Carlsen) doesn’t compete in the same events, but nonetheless, you know, if you take classical included, and I know Pragg, in the tournaments which happened in August and all, he performed incredibly well. If you go back to Norway Chess and then see the development from there, I think it’s just fantastic.”
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