three months after the amazing Carlson and levon aronian In the AirThings Masters tournament, the Indian chess prodigy had another impressive performance, finishing second Chasable Masters earlier this week.
In the semi-finals, he defeated world number 9 Anish Giri of the Netherlands to finish runner-up in a $150,000 contest over world number 2 Ding Liren.
This young man from Chennai said in a virtual media interaction, “I try not to celebrate. It is nothing compared to all of them.
“It’s hard to beat all three players. It’s not easy to beat them. They’re all very strong. It’s always fun to play all three of them, I really enjoy playing the top players. It’s fun.”
His semi-final match against Giri went on till 2 pm and a few hours later, he had to be in his school to appear for his class 11 board exam.
And he returned the same day after the exam to face Chinese player Liren.
Kishor initially thought about managing both – studying during the day and playing chess in the evening – but eventually realized it was too much on his body.
“I didn’t expect it to be hard to manage both, I wanted to play at night and study in the morning. But I realized that studying also makes you tired. You just get tired twice.
“All week I didn’t get enough sleep, yet was really tired. But that shouldn’t be a problem.
“I definitely take time to sleep. These things are hard to manage, but normal in a chess player’s life.”
He revealed that he had started studying for his 11th class board exams just 10 days back.
“I was completely focused on chess. I didn’t have much time to study at first. I didn’t expect that I would go to the finals. So far I’ve written pretty well. I think I’ve done it enough.” Well managed.”
‘Not thinking much about the Olympiad’
their attention will be on the next Chess Olympiad He was in his hometown here from July 28 to August 10, but Pragyananand said he wanted to take it easy.
“There will definitely be some pressure, but I look forward to playing my first Olympiad. I’m pretty sure it’s going to be enjoyable for everyone, for the spectators. There’s going to be a camp for the B team. I’m going for it.” I’m ready,” he said.
“There’s a lot of expectations. But I’m really trying not to think about it and play my best chess.”
Being the hosts, India will field their biggest contingent of 20 players divided into four teams. They will have an 11-day camp in Chennai from May 7 before the prestigious event.
camp will have both Viswanathan Anand And boris gelfand To guide the Indian squad.
Pragyanand will be part of the talented young Indian B team, which also has Nihal Sareen, Gukesh Dsuperannuation and Raunak Sadhwani,
Russia, Belarus not allowed to compete
AICF Secretary Bharat Singh Chauhan said that the tournament will see record participation so far but Russia and Belarus have not been allowed to participate.
“FIDE is the custodian of the Chess Olympiad and at the moment Russia and Belarus are not allowed (in the tournament), that is the situation.”
He rated the young Indian B team highly and said that the players are capable of winning medals.
“The spirit is high and I am sure they will win medals. But I don’t want to put extra pressure on them. We expect them to do well and give our best because we don’t know when it will be India again,” They said.