'My next aim is to go past 2700.'
Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa won the Superbet Chess Classic after defeating Maxime Vachier-Lagrave with white pieces in the final Blitz play-off game on Friday.
Grandmaster Aravindh Chithambaram emerged champion in the 22nd Dubai Open chess tournament in Dubai on Sunday, with 7.5 points as seven Indians finished in the top 10 with R Praggnanandhaa sharing second spot with five others.
China would have been among the top medal contenders in the Olympiad and their absence would brighten India's chances.
Grandmaster Sergey Fedorchuk of Ukraine won the Dubai Open chess tournament on a better tie-break score.
Lalith Babu, R B Ramesh and S P Sethuraman are among 23 players who share the lead after the first two rounds in the Dubai Open chess championship.
K Ratnakaran defeated Grandmaster R B Ramesh to emerge joint leader after the end of the fifth round in the Pune International Open Chess on Tuesday.
The defending champion shares the lead with top seed Pavel Kotsur, Saidali Iuldachev and Nassir Wajih after the fourth round in the Parsvanath International Chess tournament.
The result put the Indian Grandmaster in joint-third position after the seventh round in the Masters section of 14th Abu Dhabi chess festival.
GM Pavel Kotsur of Kazakhstan and Saidali Iuldachev of Uzbekistan maintained their joint lead after the eighth round of the Parsvanath International Chess tournament.
When Praggnanandhaa plays, he does not allow his confidence to fluctuate, irrespective of who his opponent is, says his father.
Defending champion Viswanathan Anand gave Norwegian challenger Magnus Carlsen a scare despite playing with black pieces even though the third game in the World Chess Championship ended in a long-grinding draw in Chennai on Tuesday. The third game today turned out to be a hard-fought affair lasting 51 moves after a rather sedate start that had seen the first two games ending in draws without any real excitement.
10-year-old Praggnanandha is the world's youngest chess International Master. His sister Vaishali is a Woman's International Master.
'It was a big relief to get it out of the way. Now he can concentrate on future progress.'
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