Praggnanandhaa explains what makes Magnus Carlsen great and answers what he has that world no.1 doesn’t

At the 2024 Norway Chess, the now 19-year-old also notched up his first classical win over Carlsen. In July 2025, Praggnanandhaa pulled off a stunning double over Carlsen within three days at the Las Vegas Freestyle Chess event.

File images of Magnus Carlsen and R Praggnanandhaa at the Tata Steel Rapid and Blitz tournament in Kolkata. (Express Photos by Partha Paul)

By: Sports Desk

4 min readAug 13, 2025 02:41 PM IST First published on: Aug 10, 2025 at 01:00 PM IST

R Praggnanandhaa, considered one of the brightest prospects in Indian chess’s golden generation, came into the limelight after he defeated World No 1 Magnus Carlsen back in 2022 in an online chess game when he was just 16. Since then, the Indian has faced the the Norwegian master quite a few times and has maintained a good record against him.

At the 2024 Norway Chess, the now 20-year-old also notched up his first classical win over Carlsen. In July 2025, Praggnanandhaa pulled off a stunning double over Carlsen within three days at the Las Vegas Freestyle Chess event.

On Raj Shamani’s Figuring Out podcast, Praggnanandhaa, who celebrates his 20th birthday on Sunday, explained what makes Magnus Carlsen great and answered what he has that world no 1 doesn’t.

Praggnanandhaa interview with Raj Shamani

“He has this intuition in every position which is just amazing. Like when you actually see his game — even in shorter formats — he usually plays the top three choices of the computer every single time. That intuition is something that he developed over a period of time. He’s one of the players who knows a lot of classics from the past. He has read a lot and I think that’s one thing he has that helps him. Also mentally he’s really strong. You can never see him collapse in a tournament completely. Even when you actually make a mistake when he’s lost he’s there fighting every chance he’s getting and he pushes till the end like he tries every resource that’s possible. He exhausts them and I think that’s uh one of the reasons he’s um he’s at the top and when he was coming up. He was playing these end games which people in earlier days thought it was completely fine. They will just make draws because of mutual respect for the players. They’ll think it’s okay no one is going to win this. Let’s make an early draw. But Magnus started playing all those positions. He started grinding and then started winning also. So he’s just universally strong and he’s mentally also strong which is really…” Praggnanandhaa said.

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Asked what Praggnanandhaa has that Carlsen doesn’t, the 19-year-old said: “I have never thought about this actually. If I have to speak about the style, he’s more of an intuitive player. His intuition is so good. Even though my intuition suggests a move, I usually try to go in details. It’s possible that I can catch him there because he hasn’t gone into the details. Sometimes intuition can also be wrong and I can catch him. Our games are always exciting.”

Carlsen is a five-time world champion, who was never defeated in a world championship until he walked away, thus abdicating his throne. Carlsen is still world no 1 in all three formats. He has been world no 1 in every monthly rating list published by FIDE since July 2011. He first became world no 1 in 2010, but Anand dethroned him soon.