A stunning victory ¦ Praggnanandhaa vs Magnus Carlsen ¦ Freestyle Chess 2025 Las Vegas

Welcome everyone to a new day of chess at Hotel Wynn in Las Vegas for the Freestyle Chess 2025. We have Pragnananda entering into the game and generally Prag rushes into the playing hall but today he's obliging the spectators. It's a weekend here. A lot of people have turned up. Prag has his mango juice in his hand. He's taking on one and only Magnus Carlsen who's also blitzing in his way to the playing venue. Magnus usually when he's walking so quickly he doesn't like taking pictures or giving autographs but this guy somehow got him. But whenever there are little kids who come in Magnus stops and that's because he never wants to say no to kids. Very cool. Magnus enters in also smiles at the little boy and essentially this match against Pragnananda is going to be very very crucial for Magnus because the one who loses this match will have to then fight for places seven and eight and the one who wins will keep their chances alive for a third place finish. Inside the playing venue we have Prag and Wesley So analyzing with each other while Magnus did not analyze the opening position with anyone. He just went to the board before the game and there you see Prag after his analysis still has some orange juice left with him and a handshake. These two players now slowly having some amazing games between them. Let's have a look at the position that we have on our hand. We have a rook in the corner. Actually rooks are both in the corners. Bishop and king are in their normal position as a traditional chess game. There's a bishop on g1 looking here. The knights are in the center and the queen is on b1 looking here. So Prag can actually play c4 first move f4 g3 many options here. Both players adjusting the pieces. It's going to be best of two of 10 minutes plus 10 second increment a handshake and off we go. Prag opens with one e4 opening up his bishop here c6 kind of the Karo-Kann here c3 the queen opens up in the position and f6 the bishop here takes charge pawn comes into the center and Magnus plays his pawn to e5 f3 bolstering the center here for white and black pushes his pawn to d5. We have like a u setup in the position bishop comes out to d3 as Harshad bhai likes to call this a bathtub setup here knight to d6 and bishop f2 is what Praganananda can play to just simply castle. Yes he plays it bishop comes out to f2 and Magnus has 7 minutes 54 seconds Prag has 9 minutes 39 seconds not a great move. By the way this entire idea of Magnus of bringing the knight here is a bit too slow. The reason Prag is castling here while the king Magnus' king is still in the center look at Prag castling and Magnus now plays knight f7 Prag slowly and steadily improving his position knight comes to e3 looking at the f5 square thinking about pushing d5 bishop comes out to e7 and now knight to e2 very useful move defending d4 trying to play c4 and d5 g6 played by Magnus weakening a bit here the f6 point and now Prag has a very strong move in c4 and he finds it he's not at all affected by the fact that he would have an isolated pawn because his pieces are super active Magnus plays b6 these are a bit ugly moves that Magnus has played here Prag now finally goes d5 pawn takes pawn and now a very very nice move here is to take with the e-pawn and Prag plays it a very good move yes you are afraid of f5 e4 in the center but Prag has analyzed that he's faster on the queen side with c5 queen comes to c7 and now can you go rook c1 and c5 that's pretty strong but Prag goes queen b3 which is also quite an interesting move now very important not to rush into f5 but he plays it a big mistake here because now Prag has the super solid move f5 wise sorry c5 why c5 so strong because first of all it attacks the knight if you move the knight d6 comes in so Magnus must take queen takes c5 but now there's a deadly discovery waiting here and how will that happen the knight will simply take the pawn here like this and Prag does it Magnus sacks his queen for a piece rook takes f2 and gets two pieces further for the queen which is completely less knight comes to g3 attacking here three times pawn to e4 now just play bishop e2 and bishop h5 and it's all good but Prag plays queen b2 a shocking move just observe the reaction here Prag has completely missed that the rook is defended here and it's not hanging so you can just take the bishop a shocking blunder he takes the bishop and Prag can't believe from being two pieces for a queen he's moved into a lost position completely i mean not lost actually the position is fine but from having plus three it's now a fighting position can Prag forget that he blundered an entire piece he just forgot that the rook was defended here now rook e1 king goes to f8 and rook e8 played and now important to play knight h5 otherwise black himself would play h5 knight h5 comes on the board threatening a check here so rook g8 trying to prevent it and now very important to play rook to g3 offering a trade if you trade then hg3 again g7 becomes weak so bishop g5 played here and Prag chops off the rook rook takes rook and he takes with the bishop and now you can take on d3 Prag actually what he managed to do here is that in spite of making a blunder a huge one he then has kind of steadied his ship made certain good moves and reclaimed a bit of his advantage knight comes to e4 you can now go rook f3 which is a strong move Prag goes rook b3 which is also a pretty good move you want next Magnus goes knight to d6 and rook to b8 played here now the bishop comes into e3 king has to move out otherwise there would have been a deadly check if you would have gone into h1 he goes king f7 then puts his king back Magnus is a bit confused actually he went to king e7 first maybe he wants to go king f7 he saw king e7 there is a queen e5 check he goes king f7 but now queen e5 is super strong move it actually just gets the queen into e6 then and Prag finds it he plays this brilliant move queen e5 and Magnus goes rook to g6 white plays queen h8 attacking the pawn on h7 the bishop goes back to h6 and he takes the pawn bishop comes back to g7 and takes knight g7 rook g7 but queen h6 queen h5 what do you want to do Prag plays queen he's thinking about it he brings his queen to h6 presses the clock now again threatening a check here rook g6 played and Prag brings his queen back to e3 attacking the pawn on a7 he goes rook g7 takes the pawn king to g6 played and Prag goes queen to b6 pinning here the check comes to the king now you can go inside safely because there's no dark squared bishop all that all that Prag has to do here is bring his queen here or here bring the rook to b6 and just remove these knights they are firmly embedded but i think you can get rid of them and once you get rid of them you have passers on both wings rook to c7 is threatening a mate with rook c1 check but Prag is faster check king h6 queen e6 with the idea of king h7 mate king h5 also check there's no way to prevent mate a massive win here first win to Prag Magnus now has to win on demand otherwise he will be out from the fight for the third place but what a game this was first Prag outplaying Magnus in the opening then blundering into a position where he gave up a piece but then once again fighting back like as if nothing happened great mental fortitude shown by the youngster