‘Fun guy’ Pranesh M becomes latest grandmaster to beat world champion D Gukesh
4 min readChennaiJul 21, 2026 10:30 PM Pranesh M does not know what the Chigorin Club in chess is. Nevertheless, he barged into it on Tuesday with one of the biggest wins of his fledgling career. He defeated world champion Gukesh D in 39 moves in the penultimate round of the Chennai Grand Masters tournament, thus entering an unofficial club he had no idea exed. For the uninitiated, the Chigorin Club conss of grandmasters who have defeated the reigning world champion in a classical game.
Having qualified for the Chennai Grand Masters virtue of winning the Challengers tournament last year, Pranesh is climbing rapidly towards another club: the group of 2700-rated grandmasters, which currently has 32 members. After losing his opening game to Alireza Firouzja, he has had a stable tournament, holding players from the 2700 club like Nodirbek Abdusattorov, Arjun Erigaisi and Hans Moke Niemann to draws before his most significant victory on Tuesday.
Pranesh also got a helping hand from Gukesh. There was a point when the world champion had a significant edge before Gukesh’s familiar woes of courting time trouble surfaced. The battle between Gukesh and Pranesh saw plenty of eval bar fluctuations, but it was a bunch of moves from Gukesh while he was racing against the clock that changed the outlook of the game.
One was Gukesh placing his rook on d5 (25… Rd5), then a pawn push on b5 (29… b5), then a shuffle of the king on the back ranks (31… Kd8) and finally a queen jump (34… Qe4) that left him in a dead-lost position. At the start of this sequence, Gukesh was actually two pawns up and had the eval bar smiling at him.
Pranesh said that coming into the game, he knew he was capable of beating Gukesh because they had played each other since the under-7 days.
“I had beaten him once in a tournament in Mumbai in the U13 category, where he had gone on to win the title,” Pranesh recalled after Tuesday’s win.
Illustrious company
Pranesh started the sport at the age of five. Soon he was winning state-level tournaments before he found coach RB Ramesh.Story continues below this ad
Under Ramesh, Pranesh was part of the cohort of young stars like R Praggnanandhaa, R Vaishali and Aravindh Chithambaram at Chess Gurukul. While all three of them rose and now find themselves as part of the elite layer of the sport, Pranesh did not have too many invitations to elite invitational tournaments.
That could change soon as his rating knocks on the doors of the 2700 club.
Asked what he needs to change about his game, he said simply: “I think I have to improve on all levels, but mainly openings.”
Pranesh was dispatched Ramesh to Cyprus as part of Vaishali’s team for the Candidates. His biggest role there was lightening the mood in one of the most stressful environments chess has to offer.Story continues below this ad
Ask Pranesh about the rationale behind this move, and the teenager says: “I’m just a fun guy.”
He added that watching that level of chess from close quarters helped him improve as well. “I think I have improved a bit myself after going there.”
In a sport of serious-looking grandmasters, Pranesh has a refreshing attitude.
“If I lose a game, I just forget about the defeat and continue. But if I have too many draws then (I don’t like it). If it’s a complicated draw, that’s fine. And even if I lose many games, it’s fine. I just don’t want to draw,” Pranesh said.
