Gukesh Dommaraju, 18, has created history. Can the child prodigy become the youngest world chess champion?

Dr. Rajinikanth and his wife Dr. Padma regularly played chess together for fun at their parental home in India. Their son Gukesh was always by their side, wide-eyed and intensely observing as each piece was strategically moved around the board. The young boy was fascinated by the calculated black and white dance in front of him.

“He became fascinated by how the pieces worked,” says Rajini The Athletics.

In the coming weeks, Gukesh, still fresh into adulthood, could become the youngest-ever world chess champion. By qualifying for this month’s World Chess Championship in Singapore, the 18-year-old has already become the youngest challenger to compete for the world title.

It was a quick and surprising rise for a player who was ranked exclusively as a junior until the summer of 2022. “It just happened by accident,” said Rajini, a surgeon. His son’s success wasn’t predetermined, he says. Neither he nor his wife, who is a microbiologist, planned or dreamed that their son would become a phenomenon in the sport. “We never realized he was a special talent,” he explains. “It was the schools, teachers and coaches who started telling us, ‘This boy has talent, you should pursue more’.”

From Monday, Gukesh will play defending champion Ding Liren, 32, of China in the best-of-14 classic matches that could last until December 13. For the first time in 138 years, two players from Asia will contest the final.

Gukesh, from the city of Chennai on India’s south coast, a hotbed for chess talent, won the 2024 eight-player Candidates tournament in Toronto to create the chance to become the first teenager to win the world title. At the age of 17, in his first appearance in what is effectively the final round of World Championship qualifying, he overcame the odds and prevailed against five more celebrated players – all with higher rankings – earning his title shot with five wins, one loss and eight draws to finish with a score of nine out of fourteen (one point for a win, half a point for a draw and zero for a loss). Should he triumph in Singapore, he would become India’s second world chess champion after Viswanathan Anand.

Ding will face Gukesh at the Tata Steel Chess Tournament in the Netherlands in January 2023. (Photo by Sylvia Lederer/Xinhua via Getty Images)

Perhaps such success should not have been surprising, considering the records he broke as a child. Still young enough to be included in the International Chess Federation’s (FIDE) world junior rankings, he is the world’s top-ranked male junior player in classical chess, the sport’s longest format.

It is also not beyond the imagination that he could beat the defending champion. Gukesh, ranked fifth in the world in this month’s classic rankings, is the in-form player. Ding, currently 23rd, has had a difficult reign as world champion and took a nine-month break from the sport last year for mental health reasons. He hasn’t won a classic match since January and has played just 44 classic matches since becoming world champion.

“I’m afraid I’ll lose a lot. Hopefully that doesn’t happen,” Ding told chess app TakeTakeTake in September. At this week’s press conference, Ding said he was not at his peak but said he was “at peace” and would discuss his previous best performances for inspiration.

However, Ding has the better record in the pair’s head-to-head classic encounters, winning two and drawing once, and his highest FIDE rating of 2,816 is higher than Gukesh’s (2,794, achieved in October).

But Magnus Carlsen, the five-time world champion who opted not to defend his world crown in 2023 but is still ranked as the best classical player in the world, has backed Gukesh to win and stressed the importance of Ding getting off to a fast start.

“Ding can’t lose the first game… from what we’ve seen from Ding over the last year and a half, I don’t think he’ll come back after losing the first game, so I’m hesitant to go with it. that he will be the first person to win a match, but I am very unsure,” he said chess.com. The Norwegian added: “The only way there will be a low number of decisive games is if Ding gets chances and keeps missing them. We could see a massacre.”

‘Gukesh D’, as he is known, started playing chess at the age of seven and won several junior tournaments before becoming the second youngest grandmaster at the time, aged 12 years, seven months and 17 days. Grandmaster, awarded to players for life by governing body FIDE, is the highest title outside of world champion; today there are more than 1,850.

This year, he became the third-youngest player to achieve a FIDE rating of 2,700 after winning two gold medals at the Chess Olympiad – a biennial international tournament held in Budapest, Hungary, and he is the youngest player to achieve a rating of 2,750 achieved. .

Gukesh said his youth could be seen as a negative and a positive heading into the final, but at this week’s press conference Ding said his opponent played “maturely in many ways”. Gukesh, who recently revealed that he was a fan of the sitcom Friends, is known to be an aggressive player and is one of the young players making a name for themselves in the sport. Ding recently described the new generation of players as fearless. “There are many who were born after 2000, they play fearlessly and are willing to try different strategies that the previous generation may not have had,” he said. The Street Times.

Gukesh is welcomed at the Chennai International Airport after winning two gold medals at the FIDE Chess Olympiad (Photo by R. Satish Babu/AFP via Getty)

One of the coaches who told Gukesh’s parents about their son’s special abilities and helped him in his development was Indian grandmaster Vishnu Prasanna, who coached the child prodigy from 2017 to 2023.

They first met after Vishnu organized a small training camp for students from Gukesh’s school, Velammal Vidyalaya, which has a great reputation for producing chess talents. Developing a strong mindset was a major focus for Vishnu. “We discussed a lot of non-chess things about mentality and how people in extreme sports behave,” says Vishnu The Athletics.

“We talked a lot about Alex Honnold (the American free solo climber) and a lot of extreme athletes and what mentality they try to maintain. I have always emphasized that chess techniques come and go and can be played with, so there is no one correct technique. But there can be a right mentality that promises performance, and that is the difference between players and not chess itself.”

His parents were never involved in training, but made sure that life outside of sports was arranged. But with the approval of Gukesh’s parents, while experimenting with his approach, Vishnu resisted using computer or chess engine support until Gukesh was a grandmaster, aiming to encourage Gukesh to think independently.

Chess also had a deeper impact on the teenager. “He used to be very naughty,” says Rajini.

“He was the only child, so whatever he wanted, he had to get it sometimes. He used to have all these tantrums, but once he started playing chess, he became very observant, like he is now. He became calmer, more patient and more observant. Chess changed him.”

Chess can cause mental fatigue due to the concentration required. But Gukesh’s hunger for the game once saw him play 276 matches in 30 tournaments in 13 countries over 16 months, spending 10am to 5pm sessions with Vishnu between competitions.

The longest match at a World Chess Championship was in 2021 between Carlsen and Ian Nepomniachtchi and lasted seven hours and 45 minutes. Such mental focus can take its toll. After the ‘Moscow Marathon’, a World Cup match between Anatoly Karpov and Garry Kasparov that lasted five months and 48 matches, Karpov told a Russian magazine that he had lost 10 kg (22 lb).

Gukesh could become the first Indian world champion since Viswanathan Anand (Photo by Marcus Brandt/photo alliance via Getty Images)

In Singapore, every classic game follows the time control of 120 minutes for the first 40 moves, followed by 30 minutes for the rest of the game. A 30 second increase starts from move 41. Players must remain poised and poised and deeply consider their movements. A score of 7.5 points or more earns the world title. If the players are tied after 14 classic matches, a tie-break will be played on December 13. The right mindset is paramount, says Vishnu.

“It’s probably the biggest stage anyone could go on, it’s all about the nerves when you get there,” he says.

“He thrives under pressure. So far, he has always delivered when he has a lot to lose and when things are hanging by a thread.”

History is at stake, and so is a lot of money. The total prize pool for the World Championship is $2.5 million, with each player earning $200,000 for every game they win. The remaining prize money will be divided equally between the players. This is a significant increase from the €48,000 ($50,489 at the current exchange rate) that Gukesh earned from winning the Challenger tournament.

Even if Gukesh remains calm in the Singapore spotlight, his parents won’t be relaxed. Padma doesn’t watch her son’s games because the experience is too stressful. Instead, she waits for the results to come in.

“I want to do that too, because it’s too stressful for us, but it’s too hard to stay away, so it’s hide and seek. So I just check once every half hour or hour and just see what position he is in,” says Rajini.

Tournaments have taken Gukesh, accompanied by his father, all over the world. Sacrifices have been made, but the family has few regrets.

“For two-thirds of the year we were traveling for tournaments, his mother had very little time to spend with us. That is something we regret. Other than that, we are very happy with how things turned out and we are very lucky,” says Rajini.

Coach Vishnu saw the pursuit of greatness firsthand. “There is no clear path to recreate what he did,” he says. “A certain hyperfocus and sacrifice of a normal childhood, a normal school life and a regular social life of a teenager, you give up all that and concentrate on the most important thing and that is getting better at chess.”

There are more and more chess prodigies, but Gukesh has worked persistently to realize his potential. “I had no doubt that he would do well, but he still exceeded expectations,” says Vishnu.

Gukesh follows in the footsteps of a great: five-time world champion Anand, now vice-president of FIDE and also from Chennai. Fittingly, Gukesh overtook him in the chess rankings last year, knocking him off the top spot as India’s highest-ranked player, a position he had held for 37 years (although fourth-ranked Arjun Erigaisi is currently holding that has honor).

Anand dominated an era, including winning four consecutive World Championships between 2007 and 2012.

“By playing the World Cup and winning the Candidates, I am trying to fill Anand’s shoes, something my generation tried and failed to do,” says 35-year-old Vishnu.

“So it’s very inspiring that Gukesh is on the verge of putting India back at the top of the world chess world, looking back and thinking, ‘That was the boy who came to train with me’.”

(Top image: Andrzej Iwanczuk/NurPhoto via Getty Images; design Eamonn Dalton)