Gukesh Dommaraju born in Chennai 17 years ago, yesterday in Toronto became the youngest winner in the history of the chess Candidates tournament, after three weeks of tension and emotions. The Indian teenager, with an incomprehensible maturity, now aspires to be the youngest world champion the boards have ever given. His victory gives him the right to challenge Ding Liren, who has not carried the weight of the crown too well. With the points earned in Toronto, Gukesh is already ahead of the Chinese grandmaster in the world rankings and is even a favorite to take the title from him at the end of this year.
Getting to this point has not been easy. In the Candidates tournament we have experienced fourteen exciting and electric days, with spectacular alternatives and good chess. It is true that the number one in the world was missing, Magnus Carlsen but perhaps thanks to his absence the other great teachers have given the best of themselves in Canada, without fear or complexes.
Some thought that Gukesh It might make you dizzy to look at such a momentous triumph, but I endured the pressure like a veteran. The equality in the tournament was so high that four players reached the last round with a chance of winning. The Indian had to dance with Hikaru Nakamura, American grandmaster and number 3 in the world, although a streamer by profession. This detachment from the profession of a chess player has allowed him to put on a show and play without a safety net, although in his game against Gukesh he was unable to break the one that the Indian wove around his pieces.
The other two players involved in the fight for the final victory, the Russian Ian Nepomniachtchi and the also American Fabiano Caruana, they drew after more than a hundred moves, in a very long game in which the American was on the verge of victory several times. It’s curious, because his performance went down and he was unable to finish the duel, trapped by responsibility. In his defense it should be said that some of the winning plays were incomprehensible to humans and that only machines were capable of discovering them in real time. When they signed the tie, which did not work for either of them, both were destroyed and perplexed. In the end, the 17-year-old had stayed ahead of them.
Generational change
With the victory of Gukesh A revolution is certified in world chess, led by half a dozen Indian players. Since the rule of the Russians in past decades, no country had colonized the world of 64 squares like this.
It is no coincidence that the champion’s jacket shows advertising for WACA, a chess academy created by the five-time world champion. Viswanathan Anand. The father of this generation of young prodigies was the first chess player from his country to achieve the title of grandmaster. Four decades later, Vishy He is still active and lives with pride the explosion that his example caused: now there are 64 great masters in his country and the number continues to grow.
In the Candidates there were five Indian representatives, between the absolute and the women’s tournament, and in the world top 15 there are four in the open list and two more in the women’s. As soon as he was proclaimed champion, Anand sent a message to Gukesh through the networks: “I am personally very proud of how you have played and handled the toughest situations. Enjoy the moment.”
In that golden generation, Gukesh Dommaraju He seems to be the one chosen to bring the crown back to the Asian giant. Yeah Kasparov He was the son of change, Gukesh is the grandson of this brutal transformation of chess, revolutionized by artificial intelligence and playing styles that break some of the teachings of the old grandmasters.
The ambition and work capacity of these boys is another of their strong points. There are videos of Gukesh in which, when he was still a child, he already made it clear that his goal was to become “the best player in the world.” Only six years ago, he won the Under 12 World Championship in Santiago de Compostela, with a great advantage over his pursuers. That boy has not deviated even an inch from his path to the top and there is no one who seems capable of standing in his way.
It might seem that, with the proliferation of teenage grandmasters, succeeding at a young age is a no-brainer. Nothing could be further from the truth; Gukesh He is the only minor in the top 100, in which there are, however, two players born in the sixties and eight more in the seventies. Being too young is still a bigger obstacle than being too old.
His possible record as the youngest world champion is not negligible either. Kasparov y Carlsen They achieved it when they were 22 years old, Tal y Karpov with 24 and Kramnik with 25. Only Ponomariov won a FIDE world championship at the age of 18, in a knockout format, which few consider a true world championship.
Tan Zhongyi, women’s champion
The Chinese player also triumphed in Toronto Tan Zhongyi, who will once again challenge his compatriot Ju Wenju. Tan already won the World Cup in 2017 and lost it against the current champion, a year later. In the female Candidates, she came first, ahead of another Chinese, Lei Tingjieand the surprising Indian chess player Vaishali Rameshbabu.
The older sister of Pragg, one of the participants who have played the best in the Candidates, finished third after two surprising streaks. First she lost four games in a row and then won the last five rounds, finishing tied for second place with her compatriot Humpy Koneru and with the aforementioned Lei Tingjie. Vaisali and his brother, with his mother as an inexhaustible witness, are two other names to take into account in the Indian revolution, which already remembers Toronto 2024 as the starting point of something very big.