Chess legend GM Susan Polgar on Thursday said that current World Champion Gukesh needs to have a very different mindset when approaching the Rapid and Blitz format as opposed to Classical Chess. The Hungarian-American grandmaster said this after Gukesh lost a 6-game blitz exhibition match against Jan-Krzysztof Duda at Katowice, Poland. She also said that because the World Championship format includes rapid and blitz playoff, Gukesh’s approach might potentially pose a problem for him when he defends his title.
“This may potentially be a problem for him in his World Championship title defense. One cannot approach rapid and especially blitz the same way as Classical Chess. The approach and mindset have to be very different. He still has time to fix it but he has to learn to evaluate positions differently in faster time control. This is crucial because the current World Championship format includes rapid and blitz playoff. Complications = burning more valuable time on the clock,” Polgar posted on X.
Duda lost the first game but defeated Gukesh in the next 5 to win the match 5-1. In the fifth game of the exhibition match, Gukesh blundered from an equal position to get checkmated. With both of Duda’s rooks converging on Gukesh’s unprotected king on the first rank, Gukesh moved in the wrong direction, playing 45. Kd1 instead of Kf1, which would have kept the pressure on Duda’s rook and avoided checkmate.
This may potentially be a problem for him in his World Championship title defense. One cannot approach rapid and especially blitz the same way as Classical Chess. The approach and mindset have to be very different. He still has time to fix it but he has to learn to evaluate…
— Susan Polgar (@SusanPolgar) August 7, 2025
Since winning the World Championship title from Ding Liren last year, Gukesh’s form has been fluctuating. 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 of the sport.
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 in July, 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.
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