Eighteen years, six months and 13 days. That is the age of the new world chess champion, the Indian Dommaraju Gukesh, who yesterday defeated the current champion, the Chinese Ding Liren, in the last game of the World Cup. The Indian shatters the marks of Gari Kasparov and Magnus Carlsen, who had achieved glory in sports science at the age of 22. Gukesh has achieved it four years earlier after a meteoric rise in the last year and a half that few predicted.
The son of an otorhinolaryngologist and a microbiologist, Gukesh learned to play at the age of seven and at 12 he was already world champion in his category. Born in Madras, he is part of the generation that took an example from Viswanathan Anand, world champion between 2000 and 2002 and between 2007 and 2013. Along with Gukesh, Praggnanandhaa, Nihal Sarin and Raunak Sadhwani are some of the great prodigies to come out of the country, who For experts, intellectual sport will dominate since it is expected that in the coming years 25% of the players who participate in the big tournaments be Indian.
In the case of Gukesh, he won the Candidates Tournament, beating the best in the world, and last October he entered the FIDE top-5 for the first time. Two months later, the youngest was proclaimed world champion. Gari Kasparov was 22 years old when he defeated Anatoly Karpov in Moscow in 1985. The same as Magnus Carlsen who, although it seems unlikely, will have a new incentive to fight again for the title that he decided not to defend.
This championship has been marked by the lack of ambition of the champion until yesterday, the Chinese Ding Liren. It was known that he was not in his best shape and despite an early victory, he was always conservative. This lack of confidence led him to make an incomprehensible mistake in game 14, the last game before the tiebreaker, and leading the white pieces. The Chinese gave away the rook and the Indian took advantage of it to clear the position and have a pawn advantage. Ding Liren’s is already one of the great mistakes in history due to its significance.
“We all know that Ding has been one of the best players in history for several years. For me, he is the real world champion,” Gukesh said. “I’m living a dream,” he added with a shy smile. Ding Liren, for his part, seemed resigned to the defeat and admitted that being aware of his own mistakes left him “in shock” for much of the game. “I think I played the best tournament of the year. It could have ended differently, but considering how lucky I was to survive yesterday, it’s only fair to finally lose. “I have no complaints,” he said.
Where chess took its first steps 1,500 years ago (most specialists consider chaturanga, invented in India around the year 640, as the most probable ancestor of chess), they celebrate again for having a new champion, the second, the youngest in history
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