If anyone in India knows what it takes to be a chess world champion, it’s Viswanathan Anand. A few weeks down the line, the lone Indian may be joined on this sporting pantheon by a young 18-year-old. Dommaraju Gukesh will take on China’s reigning world champ Ding Liren in the title match that will start on November 25. Anand, for one, is pleasantly surprised at Gukesh’s rapid rise.
“I did not assign a very high probability to him getting there so early,” he tells ESPN. “He’s the youngest ever challenger in World Championship match history. And if that doesn’t surprise me, nothing will.” That surprise, though, is not accompanied by any doubts. For getting there wasn’t easy — winning the Candidates tournament in April against the best players in the world took incredible composure, and that’s the attribute Anand values most in Gukesh.
At the highest level of the sport, the chess skills of the players are so similar, so the little advantages you can create for yourself prove to be crucial in such matches. Anand says that the winner in such a match is generally decided by the players’ non-technical skills – their ability to handle pressure, the ability to perform with composure, to draw on their strengths, to handle the nervous tension. Which is exactly how Gukesh made it this far.
“There is an element of luck as well [about Gukesh being in the championship match], though this is not luck in the sense of people got lucky. I would say this is more when the opportunity unexpectedly arose, he had the composure and more importantly the chess strength to pounce on it,” he says.
Gukesh only managed draws against all the three players who finished right below him in the standings — Fabiano Caruana, Hikaru Nakamura and Ian Nepomniachtchi — but that was indication of Gukesh’s big game temperament. “He had the strength, the presence of mind and the composure to grab his chance when it appeared, which is all you can really do in the candidates,” says Anand. “And now he has the opportunity at the World Championship, the biggest stage”
He doesn’t predict an outcome in Ding vs Gukesh, but he does say Gukesh’s recent form is encouraging, while simultaneously reminding the young challenger of an eternal truth. “It’s good that Gukesh can approach the match with confidence. But he’s smart enough to know that World Championships are won, not elected.”
With that big stage calling, Gukesh has been busy in action at the European Club Cup this past week — something that would be considered unusual for most World Championship contenders, where preparation and game strategy are shrouded in mystery and intrigue. Anand’s unperturbed, though. “The World Championship has evolved a lot over the years. Especially nowadays, training methods and the way you interact with your coaches has been influenced a lot by the computer,” he says. “I think it’s fair to say that this is probably a very reasonable approach. To play a few games within a month of the match, it hardly seems to me something to raise eyebrows. It is, in the modern context, I think it is a perfectly reasonable approach because ultimately you don’t want to spend too much time having not played.”
