Praggnanandhaa beats World No. 1 Magnus Carlsen to score big win at Freestyle Chess in Las Vegas

Teenage Indian chess prodigy Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa maintained his streak of strong performances in 2025, registering a landmark victory against world number one Magnus Carlsen on Wednesday night. 

Serving another reminder of his adaptability and flexibility across all formats of chess, the young Grandmaster secured the victory at the crucial Freestyle Grand Slam chess event in Las Vegas.

Playing with white pieces, Praggananandhaa dominated over the senior player with a strong display of his skills, especially in the last six minutes of the game.

The win scored the chess prodigy an outright lead in his group at the tournament and cleared way to a quarterfinal standing.

Praggnanandha clinched the joint lead in the White Group on 4.5 points after 7 rounds, indicating his progress was safe.

While Praggananandhaa is no stranger to big wins against Magnus Carlsen, last night’s victory was special as it signalled a comeback after a disappointing ninth place finish during an earlier leg in Paris.

Alongside Pragg, Arjun Erigaisi also won from the Black Group by seeing himself in a strong third place.

Freestyle Grand Slam chess

The event carries a total prize pool of $750,000 with $200,000 reserved for the winner. Each group has eight players in the line up and the top four will advance to the next stage while the bottom half will play against each other.

World champion D Gukesh is going to give the event a miss as he will be playing the main event of the Grandmaster tour in about a month’s time.

Freestyle chess is a new name given to Fischer random chess or chess 960 where the position of the pieces is randomly changed at the start of the game.

With little theory in the books, the version is gaining popularity as tame draws out of the openings have vanished and there are usually a lot of fighting games right from the beginning.