Dr. Rajinikanth and his wife Dr. Padma often play chess together for fun at home in India. Their son Gukesh stood by their side, eyes wide open, paying close attention to the strategic movement of every piece on the chessboard. The little boy was mesmerized by the carefully choreographed black and white dance in front of him.
“He would be fascinated by how these works work,” Ragini said Athletic team.
In the coming weeks, the newly-adult Gukesh could become the youngest-ever world chess champion. By qualifying for the 2024 World Chess Championship in Singapore this month, the 18-year-old has become the youngest challenger for the world title.
That’s a surprisingly quick improvement for a player who will still only be ranked as a junior until the summer of 2022. “It just happened by chance,” said surgeon Ragini. He said his son’s success was not predestined. Neither he nor his microbiologist spouse planned or dreamed of their son becoming a phenomenon in the sport. “We never realized he was a special talent,” he explained. “It’s schools and teachers and coaches who start telling us, ‘This kid has talent, you should pursue more’.”
Starting from Monday, Gukesh will compete with the 32-year-old Chinese champion Ding Liren in this 14-game 4-win Classic match, which will last until December 13. finals.
Gurkesh, who hails from the city of Chennai on India’s south coast and is a hotbed of chess talent, has a chance to become the first teenager to win a world title by winning the 2024 eight-candidates tournament in Toronto. At the age of 17, he competed in the final round of World Championship qualifying for the first time, and he overcame the odds, defeating five more famous players – all ranked higher – to go 5-1 and 8-0 A tie is worth 9 points out of 14 points (one point for a win, half a point for a tie, and zero points for a loss). If he wins in Singapore, he will become India’s second world chess champion after Viswanathan Anand.
In January, Ding Junhui played against Gukesh at the Tata Steel Chess Championship in the Netherlands.
Perhaps such success is not surprising, considering the records he broke as a child. He is still young enough to enter the International Chess Federation’s (FIDE) junior world rankings, and he is the highest-ranked junior male player in the world in classical chess, the sport’s longest format.
It’s not in the realm of fantasy that he can beat the defending champion. Gukesh is ranked fifth in the world in this month’s Classical rankings and is a player in good form. Ding Junhui, currently ranked 23rd, has endured a difficult period in his reign as world champion, taking a nine-month hiatus last year due to mental health reasons. He has not won a Classics match since January and has played just 44 Classics matches since becoming world champion.
“I’m worried about losing badly. I hope that doesn’t happen. At a press conference this week, Ding Junhui said he had not reached his peak, but said he was in a “calm” state and would look back on his previous best Manifest for inspiration.
However, Ding does maintain a better record in the pair’s Classical encounters, with two wins and a draw, and his highest FIDE rating of 2,816 is higher than Gukesh’s (2,794 in October).
But five-time world champion Magnus Carlsen, who has chosen not to defend his world title in 2023 but is still rated the best classical chess player in the world, backed Gukesh to win and stressed the importance of Ding Junhui getting off to a fast start.
“There’s no way Ding Junhui loses the first game… From what we’ve seen from Ding Junhui over the past year and a half, I don’t think he’s going to recover from losing the first game, so I agree, but some Hesitantly, he will be the first to win but I’m very unsure,” he told chess.com. The Norwegian added: “The only reason why there are fewer decisive games is that Ding Junhui gets chances and keeps missing them. We can see a bloodbath.
Known as “Gukesh D”, he started playing chess at the age of 7 and won various youth tournaments before becoming the second youngest grandmaster at the time, aged 12 years, 7 months and 17 days. Grandmaster is awarded to players for life by the FIDE governing body and is the highest title other than world champion; today, this number has exceeded 1,850 people.
This year, he won two gold medals at the Chess Olympiad in Budapest, Hungary, becoming the third youngest player to reach a FIDE rating of 2,700 points and the youngest player to reach a Chess Olympiad rating of 2,750 points.
Gukesh said his youth could be seen as both a negative and a positive factor heading into the final, but in a press conference this week, Ding said his opponent was mature “in a lot of ways”. Known as an aggressive player, Gukesh, who recently revealed he is a fan of the sitcom Friends, is one of a number of young players making a name for themselves in the sport. Ding recently described the new generation of players as fearless. “There are a lot of people born after 2000 who are fearless and willing to try different strategies that the previous generation may not have had,” he said, according to The Straits Times.
Gukesh was welcomed at the Chennai International Airport after winning two gold medals at the FIDE Chess Olympiad (Photo by R. Satish Babu/AFP via Getty Images)
Indian grandmaster Vishnu Prasanna, who coached the prodigy from 2017 to 2023, was one of the coaches who told Gukesh’s parents about his son’s special abilities and helped him develop them.
They first met after Vishnu conducted a small camp for students of Velammal Vidyalaya, a Gukesh school that has a reputation for nurturing chess talent. Developing a strong mindset is a major focus of Vishnu. “We talked a lot about mentality and how people perform in extreme sports in non-chess terms,” Vishnu told us Athletic team.
“We talk a lot about Alex Honnold (American free climber) and a lot of extreme athletes and what kind of mentality they try to maintain. I always stress that chess skills come and go as you please. Application, so there is no one right technique. But the right mentality ensures performance, and this is the difference between players, not chess itself.
His parents were never involved in training, instead ensuring a life outside of sport was settled. However, with the consent of Gukesh’s parents, Vishnu tried his own way, refusing to use the assistance of a computer or chess engine until Gukesh became a grandmaster, in order to encourage Gukesh to think independently.
Chess also had a deeper impact on the teen. “He used to be very naughty,” Ragini said.
“He was an only child, so whatever he wanted, sometimes he had to get it. He used to have tantrums, but once he started playing chess, he became very observant, like he is now. He started to become calmer, Patience and sensitivity. Chess changed him.
Playing chess can cause mental fatigue because it requires concentration. However, Gukesh’s interest in the sport once saw him play 276 games in 30 tournaments in 13 countries over a 16-month period, while squeezing in between games a 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Point time to compete with Vishnu.
The longest match at the World Chess Championship was the 2021 match between Carlsen and Ian Nepomniachtchi, which lasted 7 hours and 45 minutes. This mental concentration can take its toll. The Moscow Marathon, a world championship race between Anatoly Karpov and Garry Kasparov, took place over five months and included 48 races. Karpov told a Russian magazine that he had lost weight. 10 kg (22 lbs).
Gukesh could become the first Indian world champion since Viswanathan Anand (Photo: Marcus Brandt/Photo Alliance via Getty Images)
In Singapore, the time control for each classical game is 120 minutes for the first 40 moves and 30 minutes for the remaining games. Starting from step 41, 30 second increments will begin. Players must remain calm, balanced and think deeply about their actions. Score 7.5 points or more to win the world championship. If the players are tied after 14 classic games, a tie-break will take place on December 13.
“This is probably the biggest stage that anyone will ever arrive on, and it’s going to be nerve-wracking when you get there,” he said.
“He thrives under pressure. So far, he’s always shown it in moments when he has a lot to lose and when things are at stake.
History is at stake, and so is a lot of money. The total prize money for the World Championship is US$2.5 million, with each player receiving US$200,000 for each game won. The remaining winnings will be divided equally among the players. This is a significant increase from the €48,000 ($50,489 in current currency) that Gukesh deposited for winning the Challenger Championship.
Even if Gukesh keeps his cool in the Singapore spotlight, his parents won’t let up. Padma doesn’t watch her son play because the experience is too stressful. Instead, she will wait for the results to come in.
“I wanted to do that because it was so stressful for us but it was hard to leave, so it was like hide and seek. So I just watched every half hour or hour to see where he was,” Ragini said.
Accompanied by his father, Gukesh participated in tournaments around the world. Despite the sacrifice, the family has no regrets.
“We spent two-thirds of the year traveling for competitions – his mother had very little time to spend with us. That’s one thing we regret. Other than that, we’re very happy with how things turned out. , we are very lucky,” Ragini said.
Coach Vishnu has seen firsthand the pursuit of greatness. “There’s no clear way to recreate what he did,” he said. “A certain intense focus and sacrifice of a normal childhood, a normal school life, a normal social life as a teenager, and you give up all that and focus on the main thing, which is to get better at chess.”
There were more and more chess prodigies, but Gukesh worked relentlessly to fulfill his potential. “I had no doubt he would do well, but he still exceeded expectations,” Vishnu said.
Gukesh is following in the footsteps of a great: Anand, the five-time world champion and current FIDE vice-president, also from Chennai. Fittingly, Gukesh surpassed him in the chess rankings last year, knocking him from the top spot as India’s highest-ranked player, a position he has held for 37 years (although Arjun is currently ranked fourth Arjun Erigaisi retains this honor).
Anand dominated an era that included four consecutive world titles between 2007 and 2012.
“Playing in the World Championships and winning the Candidates Tournament is about filling Anand’s shoes, which is something our generation has tried but failed to do,” said 35-year-old Vishnu.
“So it’s very encouraging that Gukesh is about to get India back to the top of world chess, to look back and think, ‘That’s the kid who came to train with me’.”
(Above: Andrzej Iwanczuk/NurPhoto via Getty Images; design by Eamonn Dalton)
