Gukesh Dommaraju has had an interesting few months after becoming the youngest world chess champion in history last December by defeating Ding Liren. The 18-year-old almost won the prestigious Tata Steel chess event in Wijk aan Zee before losing to Praggnanandhaa in a tie-break in what was his first tournament as the reigning world champion. Since then, he hit something of a slump, suffering in a couple of Freestyle Chess events. The first event of the Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour at Weissenhaus, in particular, was a chastening experience: he had zero wins, 11 draws and six defeats. At the Paris leg too, Gukesh suffered. Then, at the Superbet Chess Classic Romania tournament in Bucharest, he managed just one win and had six draws and two defeats to just about avoid ending last (he was joint sixth with three others).
But at Norway Chess, the classical world champion came roaring back, racking up a couple of firsts, including his first classical victory over world no 1 Magnus Carlsen (the game that saw the infamous fist smashing reaction from Carlsen) and a first classical win over compatriot Arjun Erigaisi. He was just half a point behind Carlsen in the race to win until the final round, but ended up third in the standings.
Five-time world champion Viswanathan Anand, who is a mentor to Gukesh, when asked to grade Gukesh’s performance after Norway Chess, upgraded him to a B from a C, which was his grade for Gukesh before the event in Norway.
“I think I will go up to B. He deserved a D, but he got a lot of answers correct somehow (at Norway Chess). So that’s a B. Given that he survived and based on his points, I would give him a B,” Anand told Chess.com in an interview when asked to grade Gukesh’s performance after Norway Chess.
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Anand, when asked by the same media outlet for a six-month assessment of Gukesh before the Norway Chess tournament, had given Gukesh a “C minus”.
“I think I would say only “D minus”, but Wijk aan Zee is pulling him to “D plus” maybe or “C minus”,” Anand had said before Norway Chess.
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World champion Gukesh leads the SuperUnited Rapid and Blitz Croatia 2025 after three days of rapid chess in Zagreb. (PHOTO: Grand Chess Tour via Lennart Ootes)
“He played extremely well (at Wijk aan Zee). Kind of rebound effect. I mean, you always have this fear that after the world championship, you suddenly have some emptiness. But in fact, for him, the first event was extremely successful. The rest of the year has been much more discreet, which is also maybe normal. Everybody treats him differently. He’s finding his way. What would I put on a report card? I think “needs further improvement” is kind of obvious; “Must work harder”… something like that. He’s still very strong and he just needs to find the right connections again,” Anand had said in his assessment before Norway Chess.
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‘Gukesh made lot of questionable decisions
Talking about Norway Chess in a later interview with Chess.com, Anand also pointed out that Gukesh still needed to “catch up with the more experienced players like Fabianio Caruana, Magnus Carlsen and Hikaru Nakamura” and said that the teenager has “a lot of scope for improvement.”
“At Norway Chess, Gukesh made a lot of questionable decisions in his moves and not in time trouble. He did it in the earlier phase of the game. Quite some people criticized that and I think the criticism is
fair. Some of it at least,” Anand said.
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“The two games he won with Magnus and Arjun are really the questionable ones. I’ll grant you all that. But then let me turn the same question: How many people in the world can beat Arjun and Magnus from these positions? There are many things to criticize about his play. He was under the same time pressure as them. Second, if Hikaru or Magnus had escaped from some of these positions, we’d just say, ‘But they’re very strong.’ Same logic has to apply here.
I’m sort of conflicted. On the one hand, I feel that we can’t just say he played a great tournament because he finished on 50%. Also, the fact that you have such defensive skills doesn’t mean you should be depending on them all the time. For instance, most countries have armies in order not to use them all the time. You don’t want to depend too much on these skills. But you have to say he was very resourceful,” he added.
