World No 1 Magnus Carlsen revealed that he had endured a couple of rough days in Baku after suffering a bout of food poisoning after his semi-final win over Nijat Abasov. Carlsen was speaking to the FIDE YouTube channel after his first game draw against India’s R Praggnanandhaa.
The Indian started with white pieces and had a handsome time advantage at the start of the game after seeming to catch the Norwegian off guard. But soon, Carlsen caught up and the game ended in a draw after 35 moves. While Carlsen had a rest day after his semi-final win over Abasov, Pragg was playing World No 3 Fabiano Caruana in a tiebreaker to seal his spot in the final.
“Normally, I would just probably have a bit of an advantage having a rest day while he (Praggnanandhaa) had to play a tough tiebreak yesterday, but I’ve been in a pretty rough shape the last couple of days. I got some poisoning after the game against Abasov. I haven’t been able to eat for the last two days. This also meant that I was really calm cause I had no energy to be nervous,” revealed Carlsen after his game on Tuesday.
He also paid the 18-year-old from India a compliment when asked why he spent so much time at the start of the game.
“Pragg moves around a bit with his openings. I didn’t really know what to expect. I didn’t prepare for c4 (the first move played by Pragg). Then I started to play some common sense moves.
At the FIDE World Cup in Baku, Carlsen, a five-time world champion, is vying to win his first ever World Cup crown, a rare triumph to have evaded him so far.
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INTERACTIVE: You can follow the move-by-move action from the first game in the final between Praggnanandhaa and MAgnus Carlsen below and also click on the notations at the right of the board to retrace the way the game developed:
He has so far breezed into the final, losing just once to Vincent Keymer, before defeating the German via tiebreak.
Praggnanandhaa has managed to defeat Hikaru Nakamura, Arjun Erigasi and Fabiano Caruana at the ongoing World Cup via tiebreak. Carlsen, though, has only played in the faster time control formats once so far in the World Cup: against Vincent Keymer.
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