D Gukesh: The King

ALMOST AS SOON AS the World Chess Champi­onship got over, a video began to circulate on social media about an 11-year-old boy who is being asked what he wants to do when he grows up. His answer: I want to be the youngest world chess champion. On Decem­ber 12, Gukesh Dommaraju, at the age of 18, achieved that title after 17 days of tug-of-war over 14 games on the chess board with Ding Liren, the outgoing champion. The tournament went right to the wire before he became the second world champion India has had after Viswanathan Anand.

The World Chess Championship is probably the most mentally grueling tournament in any sport. In 1984, Garry Kasparov and Anatoly Karpov played 48 games over five months before it had to be called off in the interest of the health of the players. The format then was the first to win six games would get the trophy. The rules have been simplified somewhat so that draws count now. In the present World Championship, the first to reach 7.5 points would be the victor. Draws would get 0.5 point and a win 1 point. How competitive it turned out to be can be understood from both Liren and Gukesh coming into the last game with 6.5 points. Anyone who won would become the champion. It was just as much a question of nerves as genius.

In chess, elite grandmasters can usually make draws if they choose to, especially if they are playing with white pieces. Liren had white. Up to the very end, the game looked like it was headed for a draw, when just one move, which ordinarily would be easy to calculate as an error, led to Liren losing. Later, Gukesh would say that he wasn’t really expecting to win from this position even though he planned to still press it. He thought they would play for five or six hours to a draw. Once that blunder was however made by Liren, the camera panned into Gukesh’s face and you could see him furiously calculating and then the gradual realisation that the win was an inevitability. His hands then came to his face cupping together as if coming to terms with the fact. You could see him controlling his joy. Once the final moves were made and Liren conceded, Gukesh’s tears came down. Liren had already left but there was one last thing left to do. Even as he was crying, Gukesh rearranged all the pieces that had been captured and set aside during the game back on the board until it was fully populated. Only after that did he get up and leave as the new world champion. It will make for many lasting images.

It is an understatement to say that becoming the chess world champion is difficult. First one has to qualify for the Candidates Tournament where the eight best players in the world play each other twice. The one who scores the most in it gets to be the challenger. Gukesh got 9 points, narrowly winning by 0.5 points with three other players placed just behind at 8.5 points. All of them were much more experienced. Even within India, Gukesh was not the highest in the ratings that indicate the strength and form of the players. But because all the top players almost match in playing prowess, mental strength is a big fac­tor and Gukesh, despite his age, proved his fortitude.

Meanwhile, his opponent, Liren, had been having a bad run for quite a while, to the point that he came into the tournament with a lesser rating than Gukesh. But he won the first game show­ing that his spark was still alive. Gukesh put down his defeat to being in such an arena for the first time. He bounced back in the third game with a win of his own. By then both players had found their momentum and Liren looked his best in recent times. There followed a long run of draws before the two players won one game each until the final game where Liren’s nerves got the better of him with that one crucial blunder.

For India, this is the latest triumph in the incredible journey that chess has been making in here. When Anand became the champion, it was a sport only a hand­ful could pursue as a career. Now, India is the upcoming superpower of chess. Gukesh was part of the Indian team that won the Chess Olympiad this year where countries compete each other. In the Can­didates Tournament, out of eight players, three were Indians. Likewise, in the top 10 rated players in the world, there are three Indians. India has 85 grandmasters. With such a vast pool of top players, a world champion was an event of a good prob­ability. The credit for this rests on Anand who first brought the sport into the limelight and then nurtured the next generation, including Gukesh. After the victory, he posted on X, “It’s a proud moment for chess, a proud moment for India, a proud moment for WACA, and for me, a very personal moment of pride.”

When Anand won, there wasn’t much of an infrastructure and the online universe of chess was yet to bloom. The game is now accessible to anyone with a phone. Apps like Chess.com or Lichess allow Indians to play with the world from their homes. There is money and sponsorship for achievers. Chess will now get even more appealing for youngsters with a world champion.

Speaking at the press conference after the tournament, Gukesh said that in 2013 when Anand lost his World Championship to Magnus Carlsen, he had been in the stands seeing the game. “When Magnus won, I thought I really want to be the one to bring back the title to India. This dream I had more than 10 years ago has been the single most important thing in my life,” he said.

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