4 min readUpdated: Apr 16, 2026 01:13 AM IST
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.
The obsession with Praggnanandhaa can be traced back to a moment in 2022 when he was just a teenager and defeated Magnus Carlsen in an online event called Airthings Masters. He became a household name that day with everyone from PM Narendra Modi to Sachin Tendulkar tweeting their congratulations. Ironically, one of Vaishali’s earliest big moments too had come against Carlsen almost a decade before her brother’s. Having flown to Chennai to compete at his first World Championship against Viswanathan Anand in 2013, the Norwegian had agreed to play in a simul against 20 Indian prodigies.
Of course, Carlsen’s focus was on the upcoming battle against Anand, but a 12-year-old Vaishali had managed to force a resignation out of the man who went on to become one of the greatest chess players in the world.
The origin story of the sibling duo’s tryst with chess is also linked to Vaishali. The tale goes that when she was little, she was so fascinated by cartoons on the television that her father, Rameshbabu, sent her to play chess just to force her eyes off the TV. Soon, joining her was young Pragg.
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Praggnanandhaa was cheering for Vaishali on the sidelines along with their mother Nagalakshmi. (Photo Credit: Niki Riga/FIDE)
Comparisons with Pragg
Vaishali herself has grown immune to inevitable comparisons with her brother and is comfortable with her own identity. In a pre-tournament interview with FIDE, Vaishali was asked about the constant comparisons of their career paths and whether she paid too much attention to forging her own legacy that was separate from the one that her brother will end up creating.
“I don’t think about legacy so much. He’s helping me to be a better player and a better person, so I think it will anyway help me,” quipped Vaishali.
She explained in some detail how it was great having Praggnanandhaa around as a sounding board for ideas.
“He’s playing at such a top level, and I get to discuss the game with him daily. Anytime I want to discuss something, he’s always very curious. I think it’s a great blessing for me to have such a brother,” she said.
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It wasn’t always so. “For a phase in her career, when Pragg started doing well, it had a bit of a negative impact on Vaishali because of all the attention on Pragg. She was referred to as Pragg’s sister. But she’s a good player herself in her own right. So that was not a pleasant situation to be in,” grandmaster RB Ramesh, who has been a guru to both siblings since they were young, had told The Indian Express a few years ago.
At Cyprus, Vaishali reminded the world of her calibre by securing her spot in the World Championship. Now, the sport wonders if her results will also spur her brother to claim his spot at the biggest stage of all soon enough.
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