NEW DELHI: It was past 2 am. The calendar had turned to February 21. But a 16-year-old in Chennai was wide awake. While his family's sleep had gotten deeper as the night grew, R Praggnanandhaa's eyes were firmly on the chequered black and white board on his computer screen, the chess pieces on it and the man with the mouse on the other side of the globe, world champion Magnus Carlsen, who started pulling his hair off as the teenager from India cornered him into submission.
It was Move 32. Carlsen held the advantage of playing with white pieces and moving first, opening with the Queen's Gambit. But he moved his knight, and things changed. Praggu, as Praggnanandhaa is fondly called, termed it an error, and a "crucial" one.
