Bharat’s 18-year-old prodigy Gukesh Dommaraju capped his meteoric get up via turning into the youngest international chess champion in historical past nearest defeating Ding Liren 7½-6½ in a annoying championship in Singapore.
{The teenager}, already the youngest challenger to compete for the arena identify, received the purpose required within the ultimate of the best-of-14 vintage video games to overcome protecting champion Ding, banking his proportion of the $2.5 million prize treasure within the procedure.
He turns into Bharat’s moment international chess champion, following five-time champion Viswanathan Anand, who latter received the arena identify in 2013, and, as the game’s youngest-ever international champion, breaks the former document held via Garry Kasparov. In 1985, Kasparov, 22, dethroned Anatoly Karpov.
Gukesh was once the in-form participant getting into the match, but it surely was once a decent tournament during with the avid gamers stage on 6½ issues each and every with one classical sport residue. Ding made a one-move blunder past due in Recreation 14, which passed Gukesh the title-winning level and avoided tiebreakers.
Ding Liren (R) and Gukesh Dommaraju compete in Recreation 1 on November 25, 2024. (Roslan Rahmanroslan Rahman/AFP by way of Getty Pictures)
It’s been a important few years for {the teenager}, the son of a surgeon and a microbiologist. Till the summer season of 2022, he was once only ranked as a juvenile. A brilliant grasp elderly 12, seven months and 7 days (the second-youngest on the past), he has long past directly to turn out to be the 3rd youngest participant to achieve a FIDE score of two,700 and the youngest to reach a score of two,750. Elderly 17, in what was once the overall spherical of qualifying for the arena identify, he overcame the chances and were given the simpler of extra celebrated avid gamers on the Applicants Event to earn a identify shot towards Ding.
Ding, ranked twenty second on this planet, has had a hard reign as international champion, taking a nine-month split from the game latter yr for psychological fitness causes. Ahead of this Championship, he hadn’t received a classical sport since January and had best performed 44 classical video games since profitable the arena identify in April 2023.
He did neatly to place in sturdy performances in Singapore, claiming a miracle win within the opening sport. Any other victory within the twelfth sport left the fasten deadlocked. It had appeared that Gukesh had claimed an important win in Recreation 11 nearest a form of attracts between the 2 earlier than Ding fought again in Monday’s Recreation 12. A draw within the penultimate sport left each inside touching distance of the trophy.
(Govern picture: Roslan Rahman/AFP by way of Getty Pictures)
