An eight-man security cordon surrounds world champion D Gukesh as he walks out of the playing hall at Goa’s Resort Rio on Saturday evening. Usually, it’s the job of these burly men with neon vests bearing the word ‘security’ to escort the 19-year-old past the hundred-odd fans to his hotel lift. Today, they needn’t have bothered. After being eliminated from the FIDE World Cup with a 55-move defeat to Frederik Svane, the teenager had a large ‘do not disturb’ written across his face that would have stopped even the most adventurous selfie seeker dead in their tracks. The Chennai teen powerwalked past fans in under a minute, a remarkable pace considering it usually takes him at least 10 minutes to navigate the horde of admirers who line up outside the playing hall with screams of ‘Gukesh sir’.
Gukesh’s year of woe, since he became world champion in December last year, continued at the FIDE World Cup, as he was knocked out in the third round by Svane, a German grandmaster who is 123 ELO rating points below him. Svane thus became the latest entrant to the Mikhail Chigorin Club. The Chigorin Club is named after Russian chess player Mikhail Chigorin and lists men who have defeated reigning world champions in classical games during their reigns. In the past year, the ranks of men in the Mikhail Chigorin Club have swelled as Gukesh has experienced defeats aplenty.
Frederik Svane 🇩🇪 stuns the World Champion! Gukesh D 🇮🇳 is out of the FIDE World Cup! #FIDEWorldCup pic.twitter.com/OvCJFdOoik
— International Chess Federation (@FIDE_chess) November 8, 2025
For Svane, it was the biggest achievement of his career. “I’ve never played such a strong opponent. Beating Gukesh was special,” Svane said on Saturday.
After the first game between Gukesh and Svane ended in a draw on Friday, the German was in dire time trouble in the second game. He was down to just 10 minutes with 21 moves in the scoresheet, meaning he needed to make 19 more moves in 10 minutes. In fact, he played move 37 (37…g4) with just one second remaining. But despite his troubles with the clock, it was his opponent who resigned in 55 moves.
Gukesh’s misery against Svane started on move 39, when he shifted his rook to the right (39. Re1) which the engine pointed out was a mistake. Svane kept increasing his edge on the board by fractions before a blunder with his king on move 51 from Gukesh (51. Kd3) more or less handed the game to Svane.
“I didn’t expect to win this game. But when I had this knight endgame, it was so easy to play for me,” Svane admitted.
Gukesh’s misery against Svane started on move 39, when he shifted his rook to the right (39. Re1) which the engine pointed out was a mistake.
While Gukesh was eliminated, the other two top seeds, Arjun Erigaisi and R Praggnanandhaa secured a spot in Round 4, as did Harikrishna Pentala and Pranav V. Meanwhile, Vidit Gujrathi, Karthik Venkataraman and Narayanan S will fight it out on Sunday in the tiebreaks.
Is there cause for concern?
Despite his under-par results in 2025, Gukesh has played relentlessly. In fact, for a tournament held on home soil, he arrived in Goa just days before his first game, battling jet lag and physical fatigue as he was playing in an exhibition event in USA.
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The Gukesh camp, meanwhile, is looking at the year as a “transitional year” as he seeks new goals after achieving his childhood dream of becoming world champion at the age of 18.
“It’s very typical for anyone who has been working his whole life to achieve something and then he finally achieves it (at the age of 18). It puts you in a difficult situation. You have to come up with new objectives, new ways to motivate yourself. It’s kind of a transitional period for him. We should not forget he’s very young and the competition is very strong. It’s not like, you know, by winning the title, he got the monopoly for winning all the games. It’s a very competitive sport and all the others are working very hard to beat him,” Grzegorz Gajewski, Gukesh’s second since 2023, told The Indian Express in an interview on Friday when the world champion was playing in the first game against Svane (which had ended in a draw).
Gajewski pointed out that one of the reasons behind Gukesh’s string of defeats in 2025 was the fact that people were not taking risks against him.
“It’s definitely certain that opponents play differently now against him than they used to play (before he became world champion). I wouldn’t say they target him. I’d say he gets more respect from them. They play more responsibly. When he was younger and lower rated, the chances kept coming because higher-rated players were willing to take risks. Now I don’t think there’s a player willing to take risks against Gukesh. So sometimes he’s the one who has to take risks. And of course he does that. Sometimes you pay the price.”
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