Louis , Indian Grandmaster R Praggnanandhaa cruised into the finals of the Grand Chess Tour’s last leg after clinching a crushing 19-9 win over Germany’s Vincent Keymer here. St.
Having won the second Classical game, the Indian enjoyed a huge lead of six points coming into the final day on which games of shorter duration were played. As per rules, all the games have to be played and Keymer fought his way back by winning the last three blitz games even though the score-line was beyond repairs for him. He defeated Keymer in back-to-back rapid encounters to nearly seal his spot in the finals taking an unassailable 17-3 lead before another victory in the first game of blitz took his points tally to 19. Caruana won 18-9 thanks to his skills in the blitz games, leaving nothing to chance. The GCT finale is a USD 450,000 tournament of which USD 200,000 is reserved for the winner and USD 125,000 goes to the losing finalist.
Caruana is not known to be a power in the faster version of the game but on Monday he proved that he could prove that assessment wrong.
