Bengaluru's Pranav is the new world junior chess champion

NAGPUR: For the third time in as many world chess championships, India produced a champion. A year after D Gukesh and Divya Deshmukh became the top junior masters of the 64 squares, Bengaluru's Pranav Venkatesh emerged as the new world junior chess champion at Petrovac, Montenegro, on Friday.
While Gukesh conquered the 64 squares, emerging as the youngest champion ever, Divya became the world junior (U20) girls champion last year. Three years after Pranav became the 75th Grandmaster in Indian history, the 18-yearold clinched a gold medal each in the world youth (U18) rapid and blitz championships last year in Dec.
Pranav continued his dominance in the classical format too when he remained unbeaten in the World Junior (U-20) open championship to finish on top of the table collecting nine points in Montenegro.
In a field of 157 players, including 12 GMs, Pranav posted seven victories and drew four games. In the 11th and final round, Pranav played out a quick 18-move draw against Lavrencic Matic of Slovenia to emerge as the new world junior champion.
Five-time world champion Viswanathan Anand, who in 1987 became India's first world junior champion, was all praise for Pranav. Congratulating him on X, Anand said, "Pranav has been in great form lately. He is very meticulous in his work and constantly analyses his own games, comes back with suggestions and takes feedback. You join a very prestigious line of World Junior Champions."
Like Gukesh and R Praggnanadhaa, Pranav trains under Anand's Westbridge Anand Chess Academy (WACA). On his way to emerge champion, the 2615 Elo Pranav prevailed over fourth seed Israel GM Yahli Sokolovsky and drew his eighth and 10th round games against top seed Daniel Dardha of Belgium and third seed Aleksey Grebnev respectively.