But the unrelenting Abdusattorov wouldn’t go down without a fight. Even under intense pressure, he continued to create lots of complications, and eventually managed to break Gukesh’s stranglehold on the game. The best outcome Gukesh could expect was a draw.
In any sport, shifting gears to suit match situations is a huge challenge. Gukesh couldn’t. He continued to press for a win and put himself under pressure. In the end, Gukesh made an amateurish blunder, somewhat similar to Ding Liren throwing the final game of the World Chess Championship on Thursday, and lost. For an otherwise expressionless person, Gukesh was visibly devastated. Yet, most remarkably, before leaving the game, he was seen putting all the chess pieces back on the board at their starting positions, even as he struggled to hold back tears.
It must have been a deja vu moment of sorts for Gukesh and his fans on Thursday at the Resorts World Sentosa hotel in Singapore, when Liren made his 55th move – ‘a childish, one-move blunder’, to quote former world champion Vladimir Kramnik. Only, this time, the outcome of the contest was opposite: Gukesh was the victor, not the vanquished. Struggling to hold back emotions in the first few moments of living his dream as world champion, Gukesh yet again put all the pieces back at the starting positions after Liren had hurriedly left the playing arena.
Cutting back to the Olympiad in Chennai two years ago, fans waited with bated breath to see if Gukesh could recover from his setback against Abdusattorov. Processing losses is another big challenge in any sport. Gukesh played the rest of the games a little more cautiously, and went on to win the individual gold medal for the top board, which is usually taken by the best player of the squad.
With his performance in Chennai in August 2022, Gukesh announced his arrival as a potential world title contender. But in any sport, a lot of potential energy doesn’t necessarily in the end get kinetic. But, in Gukesh’s case, the conversion over the past two years was near 100%.Then, at 16, what struck most about Gukesh is that he seemed to have found for himself a process – one that delivered results for him – and he was slave to it: no matter what, he would put the pieces back at the starting positions at the end of each game. Also, it was clear that he was good at processing losses. Even ones that could break the momentum.Over the past two years, he has added heft to these and many other qualities, emerging as a player always ready to dig his heels in and fight for win, create complications and ask questions of his opponent. That demands a lot of mental energy, resolve and courage. That’s what paid off as Gukesh became the youngest to claim the world title at 18.
Pundits like ex-world champion Magnus Carlsen and Kramnik have questioned the quality of chess played at the final in Singapore, even as Liren maintained that it was the best tournament of his life. Still, it was, indeed, a pity that after such intense competition, the decider was a self-goal in the dying moments – one of the worst blunders in the 138-year history of the world chess championship.
That said, one must bear in mind that this was a contest between two fallible humans, not two lifeless, emotionless chess engines. In the man-vs-machine contest, the frontier of chess has long been conquered by computers. With the coming of unbeatable chess engines, the sport has evolved, and so has the human approach to playing chess at the highest level.
Cricket has evolved in such a way that Test matches these days regularly end in 2-3 days. But does that mean today’s batters are any worse? What has changed is the approach to the game. Rishabh Pant dares to reverse-sweep James Anderson over the slip cordon. When the ball pops up in the air, he looks silly. But when it flies into the boundary, it looks maverick.
What matters most in the end in any sport is winning fairly. Gukesh has won the greatest title in chess even before he has reached his peak strength. It may not have been the perfect finish. But, like Liren said, Gukesh was more deserving to win.
The writer is a former chess player.
