BENGALURU: Grandmaster Pranav Anand won the Chess Festival Groningen A championship in the Dutch city of Groningen recently.
The class X student of DPS East, Bengaluru, who won the World Youth (U-16) Championship in September, grabbed the title with a tally of 7.5 points from nine rounds.
The Bengalurean, who was the top seed with an Elo rating of 2512 points, remained unbeaten with six wins and three draws. German GM Poetsch Hagen (Elo 2478) finished second with seven points ahead of IM Zwirs Nico (6) of the Netherlands. The tournament was back on the calendar after two years due to the Covid-19 pandemic
Anand, who became India's 76th Grandmaster last year, collected the winner's cheque of 2,000 Euros (approx Rs 1.8 lakh) and a silver king statue named after Johan Zwanepol, who ran this prestigious tournament for 40 years.
The teenager, who is trained by IM Venkatachalam Saravanan since 2019, will now shift his focus to the CBSE Class X Board exams beginning next month. "Before this Pranav finished 10th in the Asian Continental Championship. He will continue to train but no tournaments are planned now before the board exams," Pranav's father Anand Ananthanarayanan told TOI.
Pranav Anand is the first Indian to win the Open A title in Groningen. Former world champion Viswanathan Anand won this title twice in 1993 and 1997 when it was a World Elite tournament.
