Mumbai, Sept 25: As he returns home from the 45th Chess Olympiad in Budapest with two gold medals — one for the Team Championship and an Individual gold on Top Board, destiny has once again pushed Dommaraju Gukesh to the forefront.It has generated renewed interest in World No. 7, who has cemented his claim to become the World Champion with a virtuoso performance that has left the chess World mesmerised.
Soon after Viswanathan Anand lost to Magnus Carlsen for the second successive World Chess Championships Final Match in Sochi in 2014 and cut down on his participation in the circuit soon after that, Indian fans were tormented by a few questions.
Who will take over from the five-time World Champion from Chennai? Who will fill in the huge shoes of the legendary player who has put Indian chess on the World stage in a nearly four-decade career? Will India once again have a top-10 player in World Rankings?
They got the answer to all these questions in 2024 with a golden generation of chess young chess players that includes Gukesh, Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa, Arjun Erigaisi, Nihal Sarin and Aravindh Chithambaram who have established India as the most potent chess superpower. Gukesh, Pragg, Erigaisi along with Vidit Gujarathi and Pentala Harikrishna crowned India as the champions of the 45th Chess Olympiad on Sunday, with a sensational dominant performance as the men’s team won all its matches barring a draw with Uzbekistan.
Gukesh has emerged as the brightest star on the Indian chess horizon, zooming up the ranking ladder and building up a rating in the last 2-3 years, and now looks set to dominate world chess firmament for the next many years.
The 18-year-old Gukesh is now India’s biggest chess star after winning the World Chess Candidates Tournament and emerging as the challenger to the reigning World Champion, Ding Liren of China. He is the youngest-ever winner of the Candidates and will be the youngest player to ever play in a World Chess Championship Final Match which will be played in Singapore from November 25 to December 16.
His brilliant performance in the Budapest Olympiad, in which he remained undefeated and finished with 10 points in 11 rounds with nine wins and two draws, has put forth Gukesh as the favourite against Ding Liren, who had a poor outing in Budapest.
Born in Chennai on March 29, 2006, in a family that traces its roots to the Godavari delta region of Andhra Pradesh. Coming from a family of doctors — father Dr. Rajinikanth is an ENT surgeon while mother, Dr Padma is a microbiologist — Gukesh’s interest in chess and his talent and proficiency came as a surprise to his family. Dr Rajinikanth is an amateur player but there is no one else with much interest in the game in the family.