World Chess Championship: 17-year-old Indian Gukesh wins World Cup Candidates Tournament

It was probably the most exciting night of chess in years, and at the end a 17-year-old, to whom experts had previously only attributed the role of an outsider, celebrated. But now the Indian grandmaster Dommaraju Gukesh can actually challenge the Chinese world champion Ding Liren for the next duel for the prestigious World Cup crown in classical chess.

At the Candidates Tournament in Toronto, which produced a lot of drama among the eight participants over three weeks, former Chinese world champion Tan Zhongyi clearly prevailed among the women and can now challenge her compatriot Ju Wenjun, who has reigned since 2018. In the open category, four players still had a chance of winning before the 14th and final round late on Sunday evening. Gukesh had only taken the sole lead on Saturday with 8.5 points, but was only half a point ahead of the two Americans Fabiano Caruana and Hikaru Nakamura as well as the Russian Jan Nepomnjaschtschi, who won the last two candidate tournaments, but then in the had lost their respective World Cup duels against Magnus Carlsen and Ding Liren.

The special starting position led to very unusual gameplay, especially in classical chess played by the world elite. As luck would have it, all four remaining candidates finally met in direct duels on Sunday. Nakamura could only surpass the young Indian with a win against Gukesh. He dared an unusual opening and hoped for mistakes from the 17-year-old, but he didn’t make any in the five-hour game. Even when almost all the pieces had been exchanged and grandmasters quickly agreed on a draw when the positions were obviously even, Nakamura continued to play in the hope that results on the other board might force Gukesh to take more risks. But at some point the American, popular with millions of fans for his entertaining streams, had enough and the game ended without a winner.

“I feel like an idiot.”

This gave Caruana and Nepomnjaschtschi the opportunity to catch up with Gukesh, who had jetted off to the hotel, with a win. In fact, the American, who had lost his only World Cup duel to date against Carlsen in 2018, managed to achieve a winning position. However, under great time pressure, he missed the right moves and the Russian found his way back into the game – only to allow Caruana another winning sequence a quarter of an hour later, which he again failed to spot. After a total of 109 moves and almost six hours of play, he finally agreed to a draw, making Gukesh the tournament winner.

“I feel like an idiot,” Caruana said at the press conference, where the presenter mercilessly showed both players their mistakes on a screen. Already on the board, Nepomnyashchi had shown pity for his opponent and said: “I’m really sorry.” Afterwards, he too buried his face in his folded arms in disappointment, as he had done almost exactly a year ago at the moment when he realized he would have to let Ding take the world title.

Nakamura, third in the world rankings, is 36 years old, Caruana (2nd) is 31 and Nepomnjaschtschi (7th) is also 33. They represent the generation for whom Norway’s superstar Magnus Carlsen blocked the way to the chess Olympus for a decade. When he left voluntarily in 2022, they sensed their chance and, like last year, failed for the second and perhaps last time, because the next generation has long since caught up with them. “Hats off to Gukesh!” said Nakamura after his game. »Look at the three of us old men who are supposedly so experienced. None of us could withstand the mental pressure. We got emotional and made mistakes. Gukesh, on the other hand, remained stable. He deserves this.”

The tournament winner, who became a grandmaster at the age of twelve and was previously only the fourth-best Indian in the world rankings at number 16, watched the moment of victory in the hotel room and only returned to the Great Hall in Toronto when it was clear that he was fighting for a play-off Monday would come around. There he was celebrated by his fans, who greeted him with shouts of “Gukesh, Gukesh”. “I am so relieved. I watched that crazy game between Fabiano and Nepo, and now I’m just happy.” It was always his dream to become world champion, “and now I have the chance. I’m incredibly grateful for that,” said the youngest World Cup challenger in chess history.

It was probably the ideal outcome for the world association. An exciting final with hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of viewers on several streams worldwide – and with the duelists from China and India, fans from the two largest growth markets will now be looking forward to the World Cup games, which will probably be played in the fall at a location that has not yet been announced should be. Since the last Russian, Nepomnyashchi, has now been eliminated, the search for a venue should now be easier due to fewer visa difficulties.