Tata Steel Masters 2024: Praggnanandhaa defeats reigning four-time champion Ju Wenjun

Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa defeated the reigning four-time women’s world champion, Ju Wenjun (CHN) in Round 9 of the 86th Tata Steel Masters 2024. This means Praggnanandhaa has defeated both reigning world champions in open and women, just a week apart in the very same tournament. This win also ensured he joined the lead with Nodirbek Abdusattorov (UZB), Anish Giri (NED) and D Gukesh.

Abdusattorov scored the quickest victory of the round against Jorden van Foreest (NED). Gukesh drew against Vidit Gujrathi. Leon Luke Mendonca won a gruelling battle against Jaime Santos Latasa (ESP) after 111 moves. He is trailing the sole leader Marc’ Andria Maurizzi (FRA) by a half point at 6/9.

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For the first time, Praggnanandhaa can also be found at the top of the leaderboard. India’s new number one defeated GM Ju Wenjun today from an interesting line of the Two Knights. “I really wanted to win today,” he explained. Their last encounter took place at Sharjah Masters 2023. That ended in a draw. This time, Praggnanandhaa had the white pieces and the result was the same as their first battle against each other in 2019.

In a variation that is hundreds of years old, it is quite an achievement to play a novelty on move 10, but Pragg managed. Ju soon played slightly inaccurately, and with that, her typical compensation in this line started to disappear. When the g-file got opened, Praggnanandhaa could quickly set up an attack, also thanks to his bishop on the long diagonal.

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According to Praggnanandhaa, Black’s final mistake was 22…exf3? Instead, Black could have gone 22…Kh7 23.fxe4 Bxb3 24.axb3 Rxe5. The game continued 23.gxf3 Nh5 24.Rg1 c4 25.Nxc4 Qe7 26.a3 Bxc3 27.Bxc3 White activated all his pieces, they focused their attack on Black’s kingside and won the game in the next few moves.

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