Bengaluru : It was a little after 3am on Friday in India, and a relieved, sleep-deprived Vaibhav Suri was shooting off delirious texts in all caps. The recipient of his uppercase excitement, Praggnanandhaa, had just become the first Indian to win the Grand Chess Tour title.
In the four Blitz games that followed, the first with an opposite colour bishop endgame ended in a draw before Caruana levelled scores with a win in the second. Pragg prevailed in a time scramble in the third and a draw in the last game was all he needed to walk away with the title. Pragg had been in St. Louis, Missouri, for nearly a month, winning two of the three tournaments he played, while Suri, his trainer, back in India, had upended his sleep schedule to match American time. The original plan was for Suri to travel with Pragg, but after his US visa application was rejected, he found himself pulling coffee-and junk-food-fuelled all-nighters from India.
It was evident in the way he collapsed in Game 2,” the 29-year-old grandmaster said. The Candidates tournament where Pragg finished seventh out of eight players with a solitary win in 14 rounds earlier this year, still rankles. But somewhere in that deficit was a version of Pragg that his team had been trying to build for the past two years – more ambitious, more resilient and, crucially, less willing to give up. “Fabiano was clearly under pressure when that happened. “Our plan was to put pressure on Fabiano as soon as possible, gain some time advantage and hopefully things start falling in place from there on. Suddenly, the match had changed completely: from trailing by six points, Praggnanandhaa was two points ahead. For a tournament that arrives once in two years, there was a lot that rode on it for Pragg and his team. Hope, primarily.
“He was in this headspace that, ‘yeah, I am trailing, but screw it, I will give it everything because I really want to win’, I could see that in the way we were preparing, the way we were talking about things,” Suri, who has been working as Pragg’s trainer for roughly two years now, told HT. “We had to win the first rapid game else it becomes really challenging,” Suri pointed out.
