5 min learnUp to date: Apr 16, 2026 02:42 AM IST
On a heady evening in Cyprus, the celebrities aligned for Vaishali Rameshbabu. For the previous few years, the game lay ready believing that the Candidates event would see Praggnanandhaa seize his spot within the World Championship to face compatriot D Gukesh. As an alternative, it was his older sibling, the OG chess participant of the household, who will fly residence from the Mediterranean island nation with a ticket to the Ladies’s World Championship in her grasp, after prevailing over Kateryna Lagno within the closing spherical.
In sharp distinction to Vaishali’s fortunes on the event, Pragg ended joint seventh within the eight-player standings. It’s a collection of outcomes that reiterates Vaishali’s credentials as one of many high gamers within the nation in her personal proper and never as Pragg’s sister, an unlucky tag she carried for just a few years.
When Vaishali’s victory over Lagno on Wednesday was roughly assured, one of many commentators on the FIDE dwell stream on YouTube, grandmaster Jan Gustafsson, was declaring the unlucky actuality.
“I learn considered one of her interviews on a relaxation day the place 90 per cent of the questions she was requested had been about Pragg, which in all probability motivated her further to point out folks (who she is),” mentioned Gustafsson.
The obsession with Praggnanandhaa will be traced again to a second in 2022 when he was simply a teen and defeated Magnus Carlsen in an internet occasion known as Airthings Masters. He grew to become a family title that day with everybody from PM Narendra Modi to Sachin Tendulkar tweeting their congratulations. Paradoxically, considered one of Vaishali’s earliest large moments too had come towards Carlsen nearly a decade earlier than her brother’s. Having flown to Chennai to compete at his first World Championship towards Viswanathan Anand in 2013, the Norwegian had agreed to play in a simul towards 20 Indian prodigies.
In fact, Carlsen’s focus was on the upcoming battle towards Anand, however a 12-year-old Vaishali had managed to pressure a resignation out of the person who went on to turn out to be one of many biggest chess gamers on this planet.
The origin story of the sibling duo’s tryst with chess can be linked to Vaishali. The story goes that when she was little, she was so fascinated by cartoons on the tv that her father, Rameshbabu, despatched her to play chess simply to pressure her eyes off the TV. Quickly, becoming a member of her was younger Pragg.
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Praggnanandhaa was cheering for Vaishali on the sidelines together with their mom Nagalakshmi. (Photograph Credit score: Niki Riga/FIDE)
Comparisons with Pragg
Vaishali herself has grown resistant to inevitable comparisons together with her brother and is snug together with her personal identification. In a pre-tournament interview with FIDE, Vaishali was requested concerning the fixed comparisons of their profession paths and whether or not she paid an excessive amount of consideration to forging her personal legacy that was separate from the one which her brother will find yourself creating.
“I don’t take into consideration legacy a lot. He’s serving to me to be a greater participant and a greater particular person, so I believe it’s going to anyway assist me,” quipped Vaishali.
She defined in some element the way it was nice having Praggnanandhaa round as a sounding board for concepts.
“He’s taking part in at such a high degree, and I get to debate the sport with him day by day. Anytime I need to talk about one thing, he’s all the time very curious. I believe it’s an excellent blessing for me to have such a brother,” she mentioned.
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Vaishali Rameshbabu meets her mom Nagalakshmi after profitable the Ladies’s Candidates event. (Photograph: Michal Walusza/FIDE)
It wasn’t all the time so. “For a part in her profession, when Pragg began doing effectively, it had a little bit of a destructive impression on Vaishali due to all the eye on Pragg. She was known as Pragg’s sister. However she’s a superb participant herself in her personal proper. In order that was not a nice scenario to be in,” grandmaster RB Ramesh, who has been a guru to each siblings since they had been younger, had informed The Indian Categorical just a few years in the past.
At Cyprus, Vaishali reminded the world of her calibre by securing her spot within the World Championship. Now, the game wonders if her outcomes may even spur her brother to assert his spot on the largest stage of all quickly sufficient.
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