<p>India's chess star Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa and world champion Magnus Carlsen made it two wins out of two as the FTX Crypto Cup favourites powered into an early lead.</p>.<p>On Tuesday night, Praggnanandhaa narrowly beat Anish Giri in the four-game match to avenge a costly defeat the Dutch number 1 inflicted on him earlier this year in the Oslo Esports Cup. Pragg and Giri played out three draws before the India struck in the final game.</p>.<p>The youngster sits alongside Carlsen at the top of the leaderboard on 6/6 points. On Wednesday, Praggnanandhaa will play American teenager Hans Niemann, while Giri, still yet to get off the mark, will face French-registered Alireza Firouzja.</p>.<p>World champion Carlsen recovered from a shock loss against Niemann to march into Round 3 of the Meltwater Champions Chess Tour round-robin. Carlsen's day started badly as he was blown away by Niemann, the lowest rated player in the tournament.</p>.<p>Niemann, coming off a 3-0 loss on Monday, was super-smooth with the black pieces. The killer move was 35... Be4, which wreaked havoc in Carlsen's defence and ended Niemann's tilt.</p>.<p>In his post-game comment, Niemann summarised his win by simply saying: "Chess speaks for itself." But Game 2 saw the world No.1 1 hit back in ruthless style to level the score at 1-1. Then in the third game, Carlsen sprung another opening surprise with the dubious 1. a3, played for the first time on the Tour, before moving into a more orthodox queen's pawn opening. The Norwegian has previously played 1. e3 and 1. f3 -- all highly unorthodox moves.</p>.<p>Carlsen quickly went a pawn up and secured a beneficial queen trade before turning the screw against his 19-year-old opponent to take the win and go 2-1 up. Niemann now needed to win the next game on demand. He battled hard, but could not hold back the tide. Carlsen won the final game -- despite missing a chance to win a piece -- to take the match 3-1.</p>.<p>Carlsen said after: "I didn't play so great, but I'm very happy with the fact I came back."</p>.<p>Alireza Firouzja, the French-registered superstar-in-the-making, brushed off his loss on Monday to get his first campaign this season under way with a superb 2.5-0.5 win over Liem Le. Firouzja clinched victory with a game to spare, picking up USD7,500 and three points. Vietnam's top player, meanwhile, has now lost two matches in a row.</p>.<p>The last match to finish, Jan-Krzysztof Duda vs Levon Aronian, became the first of the tournament to go to tiebreaks after a tight encounter between two of the Tour big beasts ended 2-2. Aronian missed an opportunity to take the lead in the first blitz tiebreak, which ended in a draw. But the Armenian-born US star made no mistake in the second to take the match win. He now sits one point behind Carlsen and Pragg on five points.</p>.<p>Round 3 of the round-robin event will be played later on Wednesday. Each match will be played over four rapid games, with blitz tiebreaks in case of a 2:2 draw.</p>
<p>India's chess star Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa and world champion Magnus Carlsen made it two wins out of two as the FTX Crypto Cup favourites powered into an early lead.</p>.<p>On Tuesday night, Praggnanandhaa narrowly beat Anish Giri in the four-game match to avenge a costly defeat the Dutch number 1 inflicted on him earlier this year in the Oslo Esports Cup. Pragg and Giri played out three draws before the India struck in the final game.</p>.<p>The youngster sits alongside Carlsen at the top of the leaderboard on 6/6 points. On Wednesday, Praggnanandhaa will play American teenager Hans Niemann, while Giri, still yet to get off the mark, will face French-registered Alireza Firouzja.</p>.<p>World champion Carlsen recovered from a shock loss against Niemann to march into Round 3 of the Meltwater Champions Chess Tour round-robin. Carlsen's day started badly as he was blown away by Niemann, the lowest rated player in the tournament.</p>.<p>Niemann, coming off a 3-0 loss on Monday, was super-smooth with the black pieces. The killer move was 35... Be4, which wreaked havoc in Carlsen's defence and ended Niemann's tilt.</p>.<p>In his post-game comment, Niemann summarised his win by simply saying: "Chess speaks for itself." But Game 2 saw the world No.1 1 hit back in ruthless style to level the score at 1-1. Then in the third game, Carlsen sprung another opening surprise with the dubious 1. a3, played for the first time on the Tour, before moving into a more orthodox queen's pawn opening. The Norwegian has previously played 1. e3 and 1. f3 -- all highly unorthodox moves.</p>.<p>Carlsen quickly went a pawn up and secured a beneficial queen trade before turning the screw against his 19-year-old opponent to take the win and go 2-1 up. Niemann now needed to win the next game on demand. He battled hard, but could not hold back the tide. Carlsen won the final game -- despite missing a chance to win a piece -- to take the match 3-1.</p>.<p>Carlsen said after: "I didn't play so great, but I'm very happy with the fact I came back."</p>.<p>Alireza Firouzja, the French-registered superstar-in-the-making, brushed off his loss on Monday to get his first campaign this season under way with a superb 2.5-0.5 win over Liem Le. Firouzja clinched victory with a game to spare, picking up USD7,500 and three points. Vietnam's top player, meanwhile, has now lost two matches in a row.</p>.<p>The last match to finish, Jan-Krzysztof Duda vs Levon Aronian, became the first of the tournament to go to tiebreaks after a tight encounter between two of the Tour big beasts ended 2-2. Aronian missed an opportunity to take the lead in the first blitz tiebreak, which ended in a draw. But the Armenian-born US star made no mistake in the second to take the match win. He now sits one point behind Carlsen and Pragg on five points.</p>.<p>Round 3 of the round-robin event will be played later on Wednesday. Each match will be played over four rapid games, with blitz tiebreaks in case of a 2:2 draw.</p>