 "R Praggnanandhaa recently won his third title of 2025. Image: X/@tatasteelchess")
Indian Grandmaster Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa has impressed everyone with his strong performances in 2025. After winning three titles this year, including the recent UzChess Cup Masters, he is being lauded for his aggressive playing style. Praggnanandhaa’s longtime coach RB Ramesh has revealed the reason behind this change.
Speaking to The Indian Express, Ramesh said that Pragg was playing too safe in 2024 and that they had discussed bringing more adventure into his games. Ramesh also mentioned that Pragg has been working on new openings and trying different strategies, which has worked well for him so far.
“Pragg is quite good in attack, but he was playing too solid in 2024. At least that was my impression. We discussed this and talked about being more adventurous, which you can see now. His chess was always quite good. Now he’s also been adding new openings and trying a lot more variety of openings in games,” Ramesh told IE.
Ramesh further revealed that there’s another key person in Pragg’s team, who is helping him with training. Ramesh said Grandmaster Vaibhav Suri has been working closely with Pragg for the past several months, but they had kept it private until recently when he started travelling with him for tournaments.
“Vaibhav has been helping us longer than this year. But we did not want to go public earlier (and reveal his association with Pragg). He has been with us for some time, but only recently he has started accompanying Pragg for tournaments and that has been very helpful,” he added.
What’s next for Praggnanandhaa?
Praggnanandhaa recently joined Team Liquid ahead of the Esports World Cup 2025, strengthening the team’s lineup that includes five-time world champion Magnus Carlsen and American GM Fabiano Caruana. However, to take part in the tournament, Pragg will need to earn his spot by competing in the Last Chance Qualifiers, where only four players will make it to the final EWC lineup.
12 players, including Carlsen, have already confirmed their spots for the event. Arjun Erigaisi of Generation Gaming is the only Indian to have qualified so far.