New Delhi: Vishwanathan Anand remained for long as the unquestionable force in chess—he still is.
However, now there is a new star on the horizon, Gukesh D who has broken past Anand’s 36 years of ranking for the first time.
Anand will not be the top Indian in the classical chess rankings for the first time in more than three decades.
The ranking published by FIDE, the global governing body of chess, announces a brighter star in chess firmament.
The 17-year-old Gukesh from Chennai made it to the top by beating Mistradin Iskandrov in the second round of the FIDE World Cup at Baku.
The end-of-the-month ratings has Gukesh now in the top 10 ranks, a great feat for teenager who climbed to the top 100 in April 2022.
In July this year, Gukesh outshined former world champion Magnus Carlsen to be the youngest chess player to cross the 2750 ratings mark, The Indian Express reported.
He is already the youngest player to beat the World No 1 on the board.
Celebrated chess player Anand is full praise of Gukesh’s achievement, saying that ‘His dedication for chess is something that borders on fanaticism. He likes to work and study the game a lot. He just brings a great attitude to the game’, India express quoted him as saying.
This young genius, known for his dislike for online chess played for fun, started using chess engine belatedly only after he crossed 2550 ratings.
GM Vishnu Prasanna, Gukesh trainer and India’s 33 rd grandmaster, calls the teenager a ‘very rare exception’ because of his aversion to chess engines.
While kids as young as seven or eight turn to engines, Gukesh just stuck to his routine for long.
‘It’s almost unheard of. The plan was for him to start using an engine when he finds himself in a crisis or hits a roadblock. To test our theories, we would usually rely on tournaments. But because of the pandemic, he couldn’t really play in events as there were no over-the-board tournaments. So the pandemic forced us to make the decision,’ Vishnu was quoted as saying.
Gukesh was among the young teenage Indian players picked by Anand to be trained at Westbridge Anand Chess Academy.