Eighteen-year old Gukesh Dommaraju, from India, has become the youngest ever world chess champion – after defeating defending champion, China’s Ding Liren, in Singapore yesterday.
There is an adorable clip online in which an 11-year old Gukesh, smiling shyly, states his ambition to become the youngest world champion. Bold as that goal was, at the age of 18 he has accomplished it with time to spare, since Garry Kasparov and Magnus Carlsen were both 22 years old when they won the title.
The fourteenth and final game of the match saw an extraordinary turn of events. Up until that point, the scores were tied, with two wins apiece and nine draws. After four hours of play, Gukesh held an advantage, but most commentators anticipated that Ding would hold the line and secure a draw. That would have steered the match into a rapid tiebreak, in which Ding’s greater experience was expected to give him the edge. But in that nervy final game, certainly exhausted by a match which had run well into its third week, Ding suffered an uncharacteristic lapse. He offered an exchange of rooks, a move which looked benign, but which allowed an alert Gukesh to trade bishops as well. The resulting endgame left Ding in a hopeless position. He resigned a couple of moves later.
A world championship match is an immense effort, that takes place over weeks and involves assembling a team months in advance to prepare. That strain is one of the reasons Magnus Carlsen, who had held the title since 2013 and won five championships, announced in 2023 that he no longer wished to defend his title. It also perhaps contributed to Ding’s slump in form after his win last year, which meant Gukesh had arrived as the heavy favourite for this year’s championship.
Ding himself admitted that he was worried about ‘losing very badly’. To his immense credit, he tore up that script by taking the lead in the first game, and despite falling behind in game 11, fought back to level the score in game 12. When the match was over, Gukesh graciously acknowledged that Ding’s fighting spirit had been an inspiration to him.
Evident alongside Gukesh’s humility was his enviable determination to win. This was a richly deserved victory. He showed creativity in the opening, brisk and challenging play in the middlegame, and persistence in the endgame. Ding defended resourcefully, but the consistent pressure took its toll and Gukesh’s breakthrough in the final game was no accident.
Gukesh’s victory also symbolises a national triumph: Indian chess has seen a magnificent blossoming of talent in recent years. Gukesh has blazed ahead, but his compatriots Erigaisi and Praggnanandhaa, both just a little older, have also taken their place in the world elite. The most recent chess Olympiad in September, an international team competition, was dominated by Indian teams who won gold medals in both the open and women’s sections. They achieved that result even without the participation of former world champion Viswanathan Anand, who at 55 years old is now semi-retired as a player.
Anand has had a colossal influence on the development of chess in India. He became a grandmaster as far back as 1988, and his successes have been an inspiration to generations of players. Gukesh, like Anand, comes from Chennai, the same city in which Carlsen wrested the title from Anand in 2013. At the conclusion of his match with Ding, Gukesh recollected being present as a seven-year old, watching Anand and Carlsen play, and dreaming of bringing the title back to India. Anand’s support and patronage has undoubtedly helped Gukesh in his campaign to become world champion.
One hopes that Ding, unburdened by the title, will be revitalised, and that Gukesh, still a teenager, has much further to go. ‘Becoming the world champion doesn’t mean that I’m the best player in the world… obviously there’s Magnus’ – acknowledged Gukesh after the match, who is currently the world number five in the international rating list. For now, 34-year old Carlsen remains the world number one, but he recently noted the possibility of being overtaken: ‘One or more of the kids are probably going to surpass me in the next couple years in the classical format.’ After achieving a monumental goal, it can sometimes be hard to know what to strive for. At least for Gukesh, that won’t be a problem.
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