Praggnanandhaa made a calm start, Keymer wins and Divya Deshmukh loses – Firstpost

The grand master of Indian chess R Praggnanandhaa took a calm start in the Masters section of the Prague Chess Festival 2025 while Aravindh Chithambaram managed an exciting draw against the star of Czech chess Thai Dai Van Nguyen. Vincent Keymer in Germany, who recently won the Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour Stage 1, is currently a joint advance with American Sam Shankland after the first round on Wednesday.

The seventh edition of the Prague Chess Festival, which is played at the Don Giovanni hotel in the capital of the Czech Republic, also saw the Divya Deshmukh of India Lose its first match in the Challengers section with the Spanish GM Ivan Salgado Lopez.

Praggnanandhaa begins with the cash register in Prague

Praggnanandhaa, who won the failures of Tata Steel 2025 in the Netherlands, is the second seeded of the tournament. He played with white pieces against the local director general David Navara in the opening round and held clear advantages at two key moments of the game – first, when he could have achieved a favorable isolated queen pawn position with 16.KF2 or having opted for the more tactical!. Although Praggnanandhaa managed to win a pawn, he could not capitalize and settle for a draw.

Praggnanandhaa will then face the Turkish GM Ediz Gürel at the turn 2.

Chithambaram vs nguyen

While Nguyen had an advantage from the start, he could not convert him into a victory. But he was given a clear route when Chithambaram made a mistake with 66.RC1? Presumably try to put pressure on his opponent. This allowed Black to play 66… RXC3! And go back to the winning position.

Nguyen, however, made the advantage after playing 70 … Qxe2? When 70 … BD6 would have been the best movement, but in case of pressure, he could not find it and finally the game ended with a draw via a perpetual check.

In other games, Keymer beat Wei Yi from China with white and Shankland pieces shot Gürel to win one point each and jointly direct the ranking. Keymer faces the chithambaram of India.

Dutch GM Anish Giri also played a draw against the Vietnamese GM Lê Quang Liêm.

Chess of Prague: classification of masters after Tour 1

Classification	Name	Points
1	Keymer Vincent	1
2	Shankland Sam	1
3	Giri Anish	0.5
4	Navara David	0.5
5	Nguyen Thai Dai Van	0.5
6	Aravindh Chithambaram VR.	0.5
7	Praggnanandhaa r	0.5
8	The Quang Liem	0.5
9	Gurel Ediz	0
10	Wei Yi	0

Prague failures: Challengers rankings after Tour 1

Classification	Name	Points
1	Bjerre Jonas Buhl	1
2	Salgado Lopez Ivan	1
3	My QU	0.5
4	Maurizzi Marc`andria	0.5
5	Finek Vaclav	0.5
6	Nemec Jachym	0.5
7	Stalmach Richard	0.5
8	Yakubboev Nodirbek	0.5
9	Divya Deshmukh	0
10	Kourkoulos-Ardité Stamatis	0