A hard climb to peak for chess champ Gukesh

When China’s Ding Laren resigned in the 14th and final game, 18-year-old Gukesh Dommaraju put his head down and sobbed over the victory. It was a gruelling duel between the 32-year-old Chinese champion and the teenage Indian challenger.

It is indeed a coincidence that the two contestants are from two of Asia’s biggest countries, with India having edged past China as the most populous country in the world. Despite the unstated rivalry between the two Asian giants, and a simmering border dispute, the contest between the Chinese champion and the Indian challenger remained free of politics.

There is not even a whiff of it as Gukesh tried to find his way through and Ding was trying hard to keep at bay the challenger. Ding won the first game but it was no guarantee that he would continue the winning streak.

The second game was a draw, and Gukesh came back into the game with a convincing win. The games that followed ended in a draw until Ding won the 12th game after he had lost the 11th. So the final game, the 14th, was a tie-breaker. If it ended in a draw, then the two would have had to go into a series of rapid moves games.

But the final game took an unexpected turn. It was heading towards a draw when Ding made a blunder and lost the strong position he had held. Gukesh had the advantage in terms of the pawns – two to one – he had on the board. That is when Ding resigned.

As the games moved from one draw to another in the middle phase, observers thought that the two players were being too cautious, and they were not taking risks and showing flashes of brilliance. It was a plodding process.

But it had paid off for Gukesh at the end. He waited for the blunder from the opponent, and when it happened he knew that the game and the championship and the crown was his.

The youngest world chess champion before Gukesh was Anatoly Karpov when he won the trophy at the age of 22 in 1985. It is again a coincidence that 18-yeard-old Gukesh became the 18th world chess champion. Gukesh was ranked fifth before the final, and Ding had occupied the top position.

Young Gukesh was quite overwhelmed by the biggest victory of his life, but he kept his cool. He praised Ding for his great game, and he confessed that though a world champion it did not mean that he was the best player. It was this touch of sobriety and humility that had impressed many.

It also revealed the subdued south Indian temperament. Gukesh comes from Chennai, the south Indian metropolis. The other Indian who was the world chess champion, Vishwanathan Anand, is also from Chennai. Anand had lost to Magnus Carlson in 2013. Gukesh had hinted that he would like to play Carlson.

The journey of Gukesh to the chess summit was a hard one. His parents, the father is a doctor and mother a microbiologist, had sacrificed much to support their prodigious son. The financial assistance needed to keep going in the later phases – of attending championships across the world – came from a friend of Rajnikanth, Gukesh’s father.

Later, Anand took Gukesh under his wing. It was quite a physical and psychological ordeal for the young boy as it was for the parents. But the effort had paid off. India has emerged a chess paradise with 85 grandmasters, 31 of them from Chennai. Chennai has now become the chess capital. Gukesh is unlikely to rest on his laurels, but he can breathe easy now for a while and enjoy the status of a champion.