Indian teenage chess star Dommaraju Gukesh on Monday became the youngest chess player ever to beat Magnus Carlsen as World Chess Champion.
Gukesh defeated Magnus Carlsen in the 9th round of the Aimchess Rapid, the 8th event on the $1.6 million 2022 Meltwater Champions Chess Tour.
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Earlier this year, Gukesh became the youngest Indian player to cross the 2700 rating, and became the youngest Indian player to break into World Top 100.
“Obviously, beating Magnus is always special but I was not really very proud of that game,” said Dommaraju after the game.
Commenting on his losses against Indian young grandmasters, Carlsen said: “Pragg is the only one I’ve lost multiple times to. As for Arjun and Gukesh: Arjun I’ve generally beaten; Gukesh very similar. I think Gukesh has been extremely impressive in classical chess recently. Perhaps this rapid win wasn’t his proudest effort, even though getting a win is always nice”.
For Gukesh, it was a most sweet contrast to the episode in Chess Olympiad in Chennai.
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D Gukesh. (Twitter/International Chess Federation)
He was adjudged the best player of the tournament in Chennai for his record-equalling streak of 8 wins in 8 games, but it was a loss that had haunted him. He had combusted against the Uzbek Nodirbek Abdusattoroy, just as India seemed on brink of defeating the eventual champions Uzbekistans.
For much of the match Gukesh was winning, before it came to a drawing position, whereupon his opponent offered a draw. He refused and got beaten. He felt devastated and shut himself in the room.
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“Yeah we won a medal, I won a medal but the bronze would have been a gold, but for the mistake I made. I was very angry at myself, and that hurts me,” he said.
But the warm embrace of Viswanathan Anand soothed him. “He told me that it is all part of life and you should get motivation from such incidents. He then recollected some of his own heartbreaking moments and I felt much better,” he said.
The son of an ENT surgeon and a microbiologist, he has the most flexible game among Nihal Sarin, R Praggnanandhaa and Raunak Sadhwani, and now with a triumph against Carslen, the future looks bright. He is scaling peaks at rapid pace, and it’s hardly any wonder that he keenly follows the American free climber Alex Honnold, who has climbed some of the tallest mountains in the world without any protective gear. “One slip, he could die. But he never slips. That’s why I like him a lot. It’s like that in chess, one slip and you could lose,” he had once said.
