Magnus Carlsen and R Praggnanandhaa will be against each other for the Oslo Esports Cup title in the finals.
Three points ahead going into the penultimate round of the $210,000 event, the 16-year-old Pragg was defeated by Poland’s World Cup winner Jan-Krzysztof Duda.
On the other hand, Carlsen, as always thrashed the lowest-ranked player in the field, Canad’s Eric Hansen.
Duda also isn’t out of it, as he sits just one point behind on the leaderboard. However, the Pole needs a 3-point win against Hansen and defeats for both Carlsen and Pragg.
Carlsen, meanwhile, faces the dangerous Shakhriyar Mamedyarov in Round 7 while Pragg is up against Anish Giri.
For Pragg, it was nowhere near as comfortable a day as he’d hoped. Game 1 started unconventionally as Duda played an English Opening with 6.e3 and then the ultra-rare 9.b3.
Duda was allowed to advance a pawn on the f-file to the seventh rank and the result was inevitable. Pragg resigned on move 65, according to a report by the organisers
In the second game, the 16-year-old from Chennai overstretched with 24.c6 and from there Duda was ruthless. Pragg shook his head as he resigned in an impossible position on move 37.
The last match to finish was ³which went to a fourth game in which the Azeri needed to win to take it to tiebreaks, which the former won 2-0.
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