Gukesh ends round robin stage winless, but sneaks into quarters of Freestyle Chess at Weissenhaus
Call it the curse of being a world champion! Gukesh Dommaraju went winless in nine qualifying round robin games at the Weissenhaus leg of the Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour. Gukesh follows in the footsteps of his predecessor on the world champion’s throne, Ding Liren, who had also endured a winless event last year at Weissenhaus, when the event was just a standalone freestyle event and the Chinese grandmaster was still a world champion.
The 18-year-old world champion from Chennai, in fact, ended the rapid section of the event with a defeat to Magnus Carlsen. Despite playing out seven draws (and being handed two defeats by Alireza Firouzja and Carlsen), Gukesh has qualified for the quarter-finals after ending in eighth spot out of 10 contenders.
Gukesh’s opponent in the next round for now remains unclear. A new rule introduced at the event during the technical meeting was that the player who ends on top of the standings after the round robin section of the tournament, will get to pick his opponent in the quarter-finals. This means Firouzja, who was the table-topper, picks his quarter-final rival from between Hikaru Nakamura, Vincent Keymer, Nodirbek Abdusattarov and Gukesh. Then, second place finisher Javokhir Sindarov picks his quarters opponent from the three players left. Then Fabiano Caruana, who was no 3 in standings, picks his opponent. Whoever is left plays Carlsen in the quarters.
Gukesh, the youngest world champion in history, can draw solace from the fact that from now, games will be played in classical time controls which he prefers over the faster formats.
Carlsen took down Gukesh in 46 moves, grabbing an overwhelming advantage in the span of two back-to-back moves before forcing a resignation.
On move 42, Gukesh moved his knight to d5 (42. Nd5??) trying to get it out of harm’s way from Carlsen’s king. The engine showed that instead, Gukehs should have protected the knight with his rook (42. Rf2). On the next move, Gukesh again blundered in a deep time crunch — playing 43. h3?? Instead of 43.Ne7+.
Those two moves later, Gukesh was losing against a man known for his end game grinding prowess.
Story continues below this ad
Carlsen himself has not looked at his best on the first day of the event in Weissenhaus, losing three games out of the five. But on Saturday, he roared back into the event, winning three of his four remaining games.
