India’s Grandmaster R Praggnanandhaa and Women’s Grandmaster PV Nandidhaa claimed the men’s and women’s titles respectively at the Asian Continental Chess Championship in New Delhi on Thursday.

The win for the 17-year-old GM comes in a year in which he has beaten World Champion Magnus Carlsen three times.

Pragg - as he is commonly known - came up with a 63-move drawn game against compatriot B Adhiban in the ninth and final round of the event to come up with an unassailable seven points. He went into the match with a half-point lead over the rest of the field.

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SL Narayanan, Harsha Bharatathakoti, Karthik Venkataraman and Uzbekistan’s Shamsiddin Vokhidov were all in contention of claiming the title but ended their final round matches in draws.

The win gave Pragg a berth at the next FIDE World Cup as well.

In the women’s event, 26-year-old Nandhidhaa needed at least a draw to claim the title. And she drew against Divya Deshmukh to finish on 7.5 points - an entire point ahead of second-placed Priyanka Nautakki.