It took a herculean effort from Maxime Vachier-Lagrave and Alireza Firouzja to win on-demand in their respective last classical round games to enforce a tiebreak with R. Praggnanandhaa, but the Indian showed tremendous resoluteness to eventually win the three-way tiebreaker. He beat MVL in the final blitz tiebreak to clinch the second leg of the Grand Chess Tour (GCT) — the Superbet Chess Classic Romania 2025 — on Friday night. Praggnanandhaa, who was leading by half a point over MVL and Firouzja, drew his last round game against the USA’s Levon Aronian, which allowed the French duo to catch up with him. The three-way tiebreak saw all three players pit against each other. The first two blitz matches — between Pragg and Firouzja and MVL and Firouzja — were drawn before the Indian got the better of MVL in the final blitz game. The tiebreak format, which is result-oriented with shorter time controls and Armageddon if necessary, was praised by American Grandmaster Hans Niemann. “GCT has a very creative Armageddon tiebreak format. An intriguing idea …