What helped Pragg topple world champion Gukesh as new India No.1?

It seems to be the year of R. Praggnanandhaa, who claimed another peak for himself when he overtook friend D. Gukesh, the reigning world champion, in terms of live rating points to become the India No.1 player on Friday. Pragg, as he is known as in the fraternity, achieved the feat when he beat Uzbekistan’s Nodirbek Abdusattorov with Black pieces in the final round of the UzChess Cup Masters.

 After living in the shadows of Gukesh for a better part of 2024 during which the fellow Chennaite won the World Championship against Ding Liren, Pragg is proving to be rather unstoppable this year. Earlier in 2025, he became the first Indian after Viswanathan Anand (2006) to win the prestigious Tata Steel Masters and has now climbed to his best FIDE ranking of world No.4 with 2778.3 points.

 Gukesh follows him at No.5 with 2776.6 rating points while a third Indian, Arjun Erigaisi, sixth in the live rankings. This makes for three Indians in men’s top-10, once again underlining India’s growing supremacy in the sport and raises a strong possibility of an all-Indian fight for the world title in one and-a-half years’ time. Top eight players of the world will qualify for the Candidates chess, scheduled again in 2026, whose winner will be the challenger for Gukesh towards the end of next year.

Why is Gukesh’s first-ever win over Carlsen in classical chess so crucial?

What is it that Pragg has been doing differently this year? His longtime coach R.B. Ramesh felt that the 19-year-old had been more ‘adventurous’ this year while having Vaibhav Suri as his second has also helped his game. Speaking to Indian Express, Ramesh said: “Pragg is quite good in attack, but he was playing too solid in 2024. We discussed this and talked about being more adventurous, which you can see now. His chess was always quite good. Now he’s also been adding new openings and trying a lot more variety of openings in games…

 “Vaibhav has been helping us longer than this year, but we did not want to go public earlier (and reveal his association with Pragg). He has been with us for some time, but only recently he has started accompanying Pragg for tournaments and that has been very helpful.”

 Incidentally, the India No.1 ranking had been the preserve of the legendary Vishy Anand for 37 years (yes, that’s right) till Gukesh toppled him in September, 2023. The five-time world champion and inspiration behind India’s chess revolution took to his X-handle to say: “Of all his (Pragg) wins this year, this one seemed the least likely with just two rounds to go. However, he defeated Arjun Erigaisi (yesterday) and today in the crucial match defeated Nodirbek Abdussattorov to tie for first place.”

“In an impressive demonstration of character, he won his third tiebreak of the year as well. He is deservedly the new number four in the chess world and the highest rated player in India,” he added.

  Incidentally, Gukesh secured a first for himself this year when he tamed world No.1 Magnus Carlsen for the first time in his career in classical chess at the Norway Chess tournament. Carlsen, who now plays the classical format very selectively, still continues to lead the way in the rankings with 2839.2 rating points, followed by Hikaru Nakamura (2807.0) and Fabiano Caruana (2784.2) in second and third.