In little less than a week from now, the window for prospective host cities to bid for hosting the World Chess Championship will shut. And D Gukesh, the boy who will defend his crown from Javokhir Sindarov in November-December, thinks that playing a world championship match on Indian soil would be “a lot of fun.”
“A World Championship match, if it’s in India, it will be super cool,” Gukesh said at the pre-tournament press conference on Sunday ahead of the first round of Norway Chess. “It will attract a lot of energy around it. I will be very happy to play a World Championship match in India.”
Reports from Tamil Nadu have indicated that the state government is preparing to bid for the upcoming World Championship in six months’ time. FIDE has announced that the tentative slot for the 14-game battle royale will be from November 23 to December 17 later this year.
Playing a World Championship at home is treacherous business, one that has made former world champions like Magnus Carlsen and Viswanathan Anand baulk. Unlike other sports, many elite grandmasters do not believe that there’s anything like home advantage when it comes to being in the cauldron of pressure that is a World Championship match.
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In fact, Carlsen was so opposed to the idea of playing a World Championship match on home soil that he famously forced Stavanger to pull out from bidding for the 2020 World Championship.
“The pressure of playing at home can be almost inhumane. Contrary to most other sports, playing at home for Magnus is absolutely not an advantage,” Henrik Carlsen, Magnus’s father, had written in a Facebook post in 2019. “A World Championship match is by far the most demanding challenge for a chess player, and if the player at the same time feels the match must be won, the pressure is almost inhumane in the weeks that the match takes place, and before.”
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The man who lost the world champion’s throne to Carlsen, Vishy Anand, also revealed recently that he was not happy at having to play the 2013 World Championship in his backyard of Chennai.
But it was at that world championship in Chennai where the ambitions of many of India’s current lot were sparked. Gukesh was one of those whose dream of becoming a world champion someday was fuelled by witnessing the 2013 World Championship games from close quarters.
At the 2024 World Championship, where Gukesh was crowned the youngest world champion in chess history, India had two cities, New Delhi and Chennai, in the running to host the event before Singapore had prevailed.
In his fledgling career, Gukesh has had mixed results at marquee tournaments played in India. At the 2022 Chess Olympiad in Mahabalipuram, Gukesh had shown imperious form but stumbled in the final round against Nodirbek Abdusattorov, a loss which cost India a team gold.
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At the FIDE World Cup in Goa last year, Gukesh had crashed out in the third round of the tournament after a defeat to Frederik Svane.
Gukesh confirms Olympiad participation
After enduring 18 months of wretched form since becoming world champion, Gukesh and his team made the decision to withdraw from some classical tournaments this year. Accordingly, some events from the Grand Chess Tour were struck off his calendar. That’s why, unlike Vincent Keymer, Praggnanandhaa, Wesley So and Alireza Firouzja, Gukesh was not in Bucharest to play in the Super Chess Classic Romania last week.
On Sunday, Gukesh confirmed that he will be playing at the Chess Olympiad in Uzbekistan’s Samarkand this year where the Indian teams will be defending two gold medals.
The 19-year-old also said he was contemplating playing in other classical events too in the next six months that will lead up to his defence of the World Chess Championship title against Uzbek phenom Javokhir Sindarov.
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“There are other classical tournaments which I am considering, but they are not official yet,” Gukesh said.
(The writer is in Oslo at the invitation of Norway Chess)
