The battle of India’s foremost chess poster kids, World Champion Gukesh Dommaraju and Women’s World Cup winner Divya Deshmukh, raged for six hours and spanned 103 moves before the youngest man to be the world champion decided enough was enough.
He had an additional knight on the board, and 34 minutes on his clock compared to Divya’s 10 minutes. He could have dragged on the game for at least 30 more legitimate moves before Divya could have claimed a draw under the 50-move rule. But it’s been a long tournament for everyone, with the time controls making six-hour-long games a regular occurrence rather than an anomaly.
This is probably why Gukesh offered a draw despite there being a gulf of 289 ELO rating points between Divya and him, besides the advantage of an additional knight and the 20 extra minutes on the clock.
In the middle game, there was a window of opportunity for both players to seize control of the game. But neither could find the right moves. Eventually, the contest petered out to a tricky endgame where Gukesh needed to squeeze water out of stone to defeat Divya.
D Gukesh and Divya Deshmukh in action at the Grand Swiss event. (FIDE/Michal Walusza)
Over the course of eight rounds, Divya has added 18 rating points to her tally, meaning she’s within touching distance of the 2500-rating threshold. Gukesh, on the other hand, has squandered away 19 rating points in eight games and could find himself out of the world top 10 rankings if he cannot arrest the slide in Samarkand. Both Divya and Gukesh are at the opposite end of the spectrum in terms of how the Grand Swiss has turned out after eight rounds.
Divya made the bold decision to compete in the open section rather than the women’s event at Grand Swiss — where she would have been one of the favourites — because she wanted to improve by playing against the strongest in the world. Gukesh, too, could have easily opted against playing in Samarkand, since one of the biggest rewards that has brought over 150 players to the Uzbekistan city is the four golden tickets it offers to the Candidates (two each in open Candidates and women’s event). Gukesh obviously cannot qualify for the Candidates since the event is held to determine a challenger to the world champion, which, in this case, is Gukesh. But with the next world championship still more than a year away, Gukesh is starting to go out of his comfort zone and play in events where he will be challenged.
The last few games have been just that: challenging. He’s been handed bruising defeats by players like 16-year-old American GM Abhimanyu Mishra, Greek GM Nikolas Theodorou and Ediz Gurel, a 16-year-old from Turkey, besides draws against 14-year-old Yagiz Kaan Erdogmus, Arjun Erigaisi and now Divya.
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Divya, meanwhile, has defeated two grandmasters already in what is turning out to be one of her best tournaments.
Vaishali, Vidit lose; Arjun, Pragg, Nihal draw
The day also saw Vaishali Rameshbabu cede the top spot in the women’s section to Kateryna Lagno after losing to Bibisara Assaubayeva, the Indian player’s first defeat in Samarkand in eight games.
Vaishali came into the tournament as the defending champion, having won the previous edition at the Isle of Man in 2023. The other defending champion, Vidit Santosh Gujrathi, also suffered defeat in round 8 after a single move blunder on move 43 against Germany’s Vincent Keymer.
Unlike Vaishali, Nihal Sarin, who had shot into the joint lead in the open section on Thursday, stayed there after playing out a quick, bloodless draw against co-leader, German GM Matthias Bluebaum, who has so far beaten Arjun Erigaisi and Praggnanandhaa in the event.
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Pragg and Arjun both played out draws on Friday, with the former pulling off a small miracle after being out-prepared in the opening by his Hungarian opponent, Richard Rapport, who is known for his vicious opening prep, which earned him a gig as Ding Liren’s second in the 2023 world championship.
At one stage, Rapport had a time advantage of more than an hour while Pragg was surviving just due to the 30 seconds he was gaining as an increment for each move played.
