Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu's chess, by the numbers
November 12, 2026 · 108 classical games, August 2025 to September 2026, from the Sinquefield Cup to the Olympiad
Praggnanandhaa's 108 classical games from August 2025 to September 2026, from the Sinquefield Cup to the Olympiad, every move checked by Stockfish, counted the way anyone's games are. Here is what the count found.
Praggnanandhaa is playing the Total Chess World Championship Tour pilot in Budapest from November 10 to 20, 2026, in a group with Fabiano Caruana. The group games there are fast classical, 45 minutes and 30 seconds a move, and are not counted here. This page counts the 14 months before it: 108 classical games across the Sinquefield Cups of 2025 and 2026, the FIDE Grand Swiss, the Grand Chess Tour Finals of both years, the World Cup, the London Chess Classic's open, Tata Steel, the Candidates, the Superbet Classic Romania, Norway Chess and the Olympiad, every move checked by the engine, with the same questions a club player's games get asked.
How they play
Every player gets one of four profiles from two measures: how often they force matters with a check or a capture, against what the position asks for, and how rarely one of their pieces is left loose. Praggnanandhaa sits under the forcing line at 44 (the line is at 52), and their pieces are almost never loose (98 of 100; the line is at 64): the Steady Hand, quiet play with the pieces kept safe. It is the corner Caruana (46 and 98) and Gukesh (46 and 94) sit in too. The other scores: closing 93, accuracy 93. The average loss per move against the engine's choice was 0.10 of a pawn: 0.06 in the opening, 0.09 in the middlegame and 0.13 in the endgame, with the first serious mistake typically on move 38. When the engine's best move was a retreat, 417 times, they played it every time.
Two classical games against Carlsen in 2026, two wins.
2 of 2 classical games against Carlsen at Norway Chess 2026 won
Praggnanandhaa met Carlsen twice in classical at Norway Chess 2026 and won both: with White in round 3, a Sicilian, in 46 moves, and with Black in round 8, a French, in 50. In the games on Carlsen's page the two also met at Norway Chess 2024, a win for Praggnanandhaa in 37 moves and a draw in 75. So at Norway Chess, in 2024 and 2026, the count is four classical games, three wins and a draw; games elsewhere are not counted here. They were the only two of the 108 games against an opponent rated 100 or more points higher.
Against Caruana: seven classical games, five draws and two losses.
7 classical games against Caruana since August 2025: five draws and two losses
Praggnanandhaa and Caruana played seven classical games in these 14 months. Five were drawn: at the Sinquefield Cup 2025 in 37 moves, twice at the Candidates 2026 (round 7 and round 13), at the Sinquefield Cup 2026 in 56, and in the second classical game of the Grand Chess Tour Finals 2026, in 95. Caruana won the other two: with Black in 33 moves at the Superbet Classic Romania 2026, and with White in 48 in the first classical game of that final. Against everyone else rated 2734 to 2845, around Caruana's rating, Praggnanandhaa scored 52% in 44 games: 11 wins, 24 draws, 9 losses. The two are in the same group in Budapest in November 2026, in fast classical games.
13 of 14 classical losses had no blunder in them.
13 of 14 classical losses had no blunder in them
Praggnanandhaa lost 14 of the 108 classical games, and in 13 of them no single move was a blunder: they were outplayed a little at a time. The one that turned on a move was against Gukesh at Norway Chess 2026, in round 5, where 43.Kf2 let the bishop take the pawn on d6; pushing the pawn to c7 kept the game level, checked again at depth 22. The field across the 108 games: a median opponent rated 2730, 79 games against players within 100 points (scoring 51%) and 27 against players 100 or more points lower (67%). For scale, Caruana's count is 10 of 11 losses, from 84 games, and Gukesh's 20 of 21, from 79.
Once meaningfully up, they won 26 of 28 and lost none.
93% of decisive advantages converted in classical
Praggnanandhaa was meaningfully up, three pawns' worth or more by the engine, in 28 classical games and won 26 of them (93%); the other 2 were drawn. The draws were against Matthias Bluebaum at the Candidates 2026, where 34.Qf3 let go of a position the rook capture on f7 was winning, and against Abhimanyu Mishra at the FIDE Grand Swiss 2025 in round 4. Counted the same way, Caruana won 25 of 25 in 84 classical games, Sindarov 23 of 25 in 71, and Gukesh 21 of 25 in 79.
561 times a piece stood loose. Three times it cost them.
3 of 561 loose pieces cost 10 or more points of winning chances
A loose piece is attacked with nothing defending it. On 11% of Praggnanandhaa's turns in the 108 classical games one of their pieces stood that way, and the engine checked 561 of those moments. Three were slips; the other 558 it was content with, the piece loose by choice or with nothing to fear. One of the three came against Hans Niemann at the FIDE Grand Swiss 2025, in round 10: with the bishop on e2 attacked and undefended, 34...Qf1 cost 18 points, where the engine wanted the queen on c5. The same check on the other reports here: So, 0 of 281 in 66 classical games; Sindarov, 2 of 334 in 71; Caruana, 3 of 351 in 84; Carlsen, 6 of 267 in 57; Gukesh, 9 of 406 in 79.
As White, 1.d4 in 24 games and 1.e4 in 20.
45% of 53 classical games as White opened with d4
As White, Praggnanandhaa opened 1.d4 in 24 of 53 classical games, 1.e4 in 20, 1.c4 in 5 and 1.Nf3 in 4, scoring 16 wins, 33 draws and 4 losses; with Black the count is 10 wins, 35 draws and 10 losses. As Black against 1.e4 the answer was 1...e5 in 10 of 25 games, and the French and the Sicilian 6 times each; against 1.d4, 1...Nf6 in 13 of 22 and 1...d5 in 7. Gukesh leans the other way as White: 1.e4 in 20 of 40 classical games, 1.d4 in 16.
The full reports
- Praggnanandhaa's classical report
108 classical games, August 2025 to September 2026: the Sinquefield Cup 2025 (9) and 2026 (9), the FIDE Grand Swiss 2025 (11), the Grand Chess Tour Finals 2025 (4) and 2026 (4), the FIDE World Cup 2025 (6), the London Chess Classic FIDE Open 2025 (9), Tata Steel 2026 (13), the FIDE Candidates 2026 (14), the Superbet Classic Romania 2026 (9), Norway Chess 2026 (10) and the Olympiad 2026 (10), from Lichess's broadcasts. 26 wins, 68 draws, 14 losses. Download the games (PGN)
Each report opens as a deck of slides, one finding to a slide, with the positions behind every number. A blunder is a move that cost 30 or more points of winning chances; winning chances are the engine's estimate of how likely a player is to win, from 0 to 100.
How this was measured
Plysight analyzes games the same way for everyone: Stockfish evaluates every move, and the findings are counted from those evaluations. The reports compare a player with others at their rating where a fair comparison exists; at Praggnanandhaa's rating there is none, so those lines are left out. Advice lines, written for a player reading their own report, are left out too. Praggnanandhaa's online blitz is not on this page: it stands on the classical games. The Budapest games of November 2026, at 45 minutes and 30 seconds a move, are fast classical and are left out. Other players' numbers on this page come from their own pages and reports on this site, the same checks on the same kind of games. The six house words the reports use are defined on the report's last slide.
Classical games from Lichess's broadcasts, August 2025 to September 2026. Plysight is independent of Lichess, chess.com and Praggnanandhaa. Praggnanandhaa's FIDE profile. Published November 12, 2026; updated November 12, 2026.
Piece art by Cburnett, CC BY-SA 3.0.