5 min readUpdated: Mar 20, 2026 09:06 PM IST French grandmaster Maxime Vachier-Lagrave has put India’s R Praggnanandhaa in the third tier in his ‘tier-list’ for the upcoming Candidates tournament where he has analysed and ranked all the eight players in the open Candidates event. The French grandmaster made the comments in a conversation on the Chess with Mustreader YouTube channel, where he also accepted that his opinion about Pragg was a bit of a “hot take”. Vachier-Lagrave started his tier list by pointing out that he did not “discount anyone” winning the title, pointing out that if the Candidates were held 25 times with the same set of players, all of the eight players would win the event at least once. Before we get to what Vachier-Lagrave said about Pragg, here’s a look at his tier list (where S is favourite while A, B and C are in descending order of chances the players have of winning the Candidates according to Vachier-Lagrave): Here is Maxime Vachier-Lagrave’s tier list: Tier S: Fabiano Caruana Tier A: …