One very important thing that can lead to chess improvement is watching the live games without an engine. At night after all my work is done I make it a point to do that. I go to ChessBase Live website and in one glance check out which are the interesting events going on. Right now we have the FIDE Grand Prix which is a big one in progress. But one tournament which has caught world wide attention is definitely the World Juniors. In spite of great attempts by the organizers to ensure that the chess world gets no real coverage (!) - mainly not even round by round photographs for such a huge event, the play of a 12-year-old super talent is making everyone take note of this championship! (Also you can find daily reports of the event on ChessBase India newspage!) Praggnanandhaa has been playing with great energy and accuracy. His game against Jorden van Foreest was nearly flawless and I covered it in a video.

 

While the game with Jorden was a positional masterpiece, Pragg's battle in the fifth round against S.L. Narayanan (2585) was a fight of wild complications.

All hell broke loose after Narayanan sacrificed his knight on g5.

I sat down with this game and tried to make sense of what was going on. I realized the Narayanan's sacrifice was very powerful and at the same time Pragg defended amazingly well. It was a game of attack and defence and finally a brief counter-attack which sealed the deal in Praggu's favour. Here's the entire analysis.

Video analysis:

Replay the game: