Bengaluru: An 18-year-old Indian has the chance to do the craziest thing. Three weeks from now, chess could very well be looking at its youngest ever undisputed world champion.
D Gukesh – he showed up in his school uniform to accept a Mercedes Benz E-Class lavished on him by his Chennai alma mater a couple of months ago – goes up against China’s defending champion Ding Liren as a significant favourite in the World Championship match starting in Singapore on Monday.
Gukesh, 18, has been in pretty rampaging touch while Ding hasn’t had a classical win in over 300 days. As things stand, the match-up appears lopsided, unless Ding, 32, manages to summon some fight and make Gukesh’s path to history difficult. Who can forget Ding’s bold self-pin in the rapid playoff to become world champion last year?
It’s the first time that an Indian other than Viswanathan Anand will feature in the title match – which happens to be the highest prize in chess. Ten years ago, Anand – he won the world title five times – played the World Championship match for the last time, losing to Magnus Carlsen in Sochi, Russia. Carlsen ruled with an iron fist until he decided that he had had his fill of these matches and the painstaking preparation they demanded. He walked away with an unbeaten reign of close to a decade. By virtue of having finished second in the Candidates tournament behind Ian Nepomniachtchi, Ding was the automatic choice to fill in then. Gukesh earned the right to play this year’s match after he became the youngest Candidates winner at 17.
It’s strange, although not without precedent, that the match doesn’t feature the world’s best player. There have been instances in the past that the world champion and the world’s best player have been different people. Gukesh is ranked No.5 while Ding is ranked No.23 in the world. No defending world champion has been ranked as low during his reign.
A few days ago, world No.1 Carlsen reminded the world of his absence from the World Championship scene with a bare-bodied chess960 bout against world No.2 Fabiano Caruana while dunked in an infinity pool in Singapore. “My hottest take is that I don’t treat this as a World Championship match,” former world champion Garry Kasparov said earlier. “It is an important Fide event but has nothing to do with the main idea of the World Championship – crowning the best player on the planet.”
Should Gukesh win, he will surpass Kasparov’s youngest-ever undisputed champion record.
In the match between two Asians taking place in south-east Asia for only the second time in history, Ding’s form is a worry. The Olympiad in September – it was the Chinese GM’s last tournament leading up to the match – had Ding finish winless. Gukesh lorded over Board 1 with an individual gold, the tournament’s best rating performance of 3056 and a gain of as much as 30.1 rating points.
“For me it’s pretty clear who I’m going to face,” Gukesh said during Saturday’s opening press conference. “I’m going to face Ding Liren, who has been one of the best players in the world for more than a decade. My job is pretty clear – just go into every game as the best version of myself and play the best moves in the position. If I do that, even with his recent dip in form or even at his best, I don’t think it really matters.”
Gukesh will open with White in Game 1 and might want to land an early blow.
While Ding is a solid, intuitive player, Gukesh is a calculation monster. In the three instances they’ve played each other in classical chess, Ding has won twice. The other ended in a draw. “The Gukesh of today is very difficult to beat. You have to both outplay and out-calculate him,” Gukesh’s Polish coach Grzegorz Gajewski put it lucidly in a recent interview to HT.
During last year’s title match against Nepomniachtchi with Black, Ding used the Queen’s Gambit Declined against 1.d4 and the Marshall and Ruy Lopez against 1.e4. With White, he seems to prefer closed openings like 1.d4. Generally known to have a bit of a predictable repertoire, Ding uncorked a surprise in Game 7 last year – playing the French Defense. He eventually collapsed under time pressure. Creative Hungarian GM Richard Rapport, who he later acknowledged was the brain behind the surprise, is reportedly part of his team this time too.
Fourteen years younger than his opponent, Gukesh is flexible with his openings and his play is generally aggressive and idea-driven. With computer engines now of behemoth strength, a player’s team typically looks for slightly less optimal lines that have a higher chance of throwing off the opponent, leading him down a less familiar path and provoking errors. Gukesh’s composure in pressure situations has been remarkable for his age, one that Ding too couldn’t help but commend.
The Indian teen goes into the match hungry and driven to bring his greatest dream to life. Anand has played a huge role in him reaching this point so quickly – placing him under his direct mentorship and forging a successful partnership between him and his former second, Gajewski. Anand’s final words of advice? “Be confident, but cautious. Ding is after all a great player.”
On Monday, when Gukesh sits across from Ding for their opening match at Singapore’s Equarius Hotel, he might have the hopes of a nation, and some jangling nerves to contend with. He has a chance to do what no teenager in chess has done before. It’s a massive moment for him, Indian chess and the future of the game. History beckons?
