World Chess Championship – World Champion Dommaraju Gukesh and the return of romance

It was an extremely bitter end for the self-sacrificing fighting man Ding Liren. Before the duel for the World Chess Championship crown, hardly anyone believed he would be able to keep up. After winning the title a year and a half ago, the Chinese had to deal with psychological and emotional difficulties, which inevitably turned into a sporting crisis. In Singapore he fought against 18-year-old challenger Dommaraju Gukesh, but lost everything with a fatal mistake on the last move.

Unspectacular maneuvers

But the defending champion was able to show his extraordinary talent. The 32-year-old doggedly defended dangerous positions again and again. And when he fell behind after the 11th game, he showed a flawless performance the next day, which allowed him to push Gukesh to the wall with some initially unspectacular maneuvers. It remained his best performance in this duel.

Ding’s last move in what was actually an even position in the 14th game on Thursday, in which he gave away his rook, ultimately fueled discussions about the level of this World Cup again. Some grandmasters like Hikaru Nakamura and Magnus Carlsen emphasized throughout the tournament that a title fight was not enough. It is possible that offended vanities played a role here. Or the stubborn machismo that is widespread in the chess world. Because data analysis proves the opposite: Game theorist Mehmet Ismail’s computer model comes to the conclusion that game accuracy this year will only be exceeded by a single match – the legendary encounter between Garry Kasparov and Viswanathan Anand in 1995.

Play with pleasure

This is also surprising because this World Cup was also a return of what could be called “romantic chess”. Both players didn’t hide behind rock-solid preparation, but instead tried again and again to outplay the opponent and get them to make a mistake. Gukesh was regularly asked in the press conferences why he had decided to play a few more moves in a completely balanced position. His answer was as simple as it was obvious: “I just enjoy playing chess.” This enjoyment of playing chess leads to the point of this duel: In the end, the person who enjoys the game more will win.

With the Indian teenager’s victory, the generational change that chess has been waiting for for some time now also becomes more apparent. The dominant players so far, which include Carlsen and Nakamura as well as former challengers Ian Nepomniachtchi and Fabiano Caruana, are being harassed by a whole series of young players.

A German in the winning team

Gukesh is of course the first to be mentioned, followed by the Uzbek Nodirbek Abdusattorov and Alireza Firouzja from France who are ready to take the big stage. And also a handful of other Indian players like Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa, Nihal Sarin and Arjun Erigaisi, who was very close to displacing Magnus Carlsen from the top of the world rankings this year. The extended circle of these young attackers also includes the German Vincent Keymer, who was part of the Gukesh team at the World Cup duel.

Viswanathan Anand was also part of the winning team. This is perhaps the most amazing story of this World Cup. The fact that there are currently so many Indian grandmasters among the generation that is now attacking the world’s best is primarily thanks to him: When Anand broke decades of Russian dominance in 2007, he was a solitary player without much support behind him. That has now fundamentally changed: Indian players will probably have a say in this sport for years to come. The Indian city of Chenai, where Anand once learned a lot in a British chess club, is now one of the world’s largest metropolises for the sport.

This may also reopen the question of who could be the greatest chess player of all time. Even though Magnus Carlsen has undoubtedly dominated his time on the board in a way that no one before has, he cannot claim to have opened up an entire subcontinent for the sport. Perhaps this at least partially explains the tight-lipped manner with which the Norwegian commented on the current games.