She started out as the lowest seed. She started slowly, drawing all of her first four games. And then she lost in the fifth round. On a heady night in Cyprus, the stars aligned for Vaishali Rameshbabu. For the past few years, the sport lay waiting believing that the Candidates tournament would see Praggnanandhaa grab his spot in the World Championship to face compatriot D Gukesh. Instead, it was his older sibling, the OG chess player of the family, who will fly home from the Mediterranean island nation with a ticket to the Women’s World Championship in her grasp, after prevailing over Kateryna Lagno in the final round. In sharp contrast to Vaishali’s fortunes at the tournament, Pragg ended joint seventh in the eight-player standings. It’s a series of results that reiterates Vaishali’s credentials as one of the top players in the country in her own right and not as Pragg’s sister, an unfortunate tag she carried for a few years. When Vaishali’s victory over Lagno on Wednesday was more or less assured, one of the commentators on the FIDE live stream on YouTube, grandmaster Jan Gustafsson, was pointing out the unfortunate reality. “I read one of her interviews on a rest day where 90 per cent of the questions she was asked were about Pragg, which probably motivated her extra to show people (who she is),” said Gustafsson.
