With five-time world champion Magnus Carlsen lashing out at the quality of matches at the World Chess Championship between India’s D Gukesh and China’s Ding Liren and terming the games ‘not looking like a game between two World Championship contenders’, earlier this week, D Gukesh, who at 18 years of age became the youngest champion on Thursday, termed his title win coming from his character and will power.
When asked on BBC World about being hurt by Carlsen’s comments, the Indian replied in the negative. “Not really. I get that maybe in some of the games, the quality was not high but I think the world championship matches are decided not purely by chess but by who has the better character and who has the better willpower. And I think those qualities, I did show quite well. And the pure chess part, it was not at a very high level as I would have liked it to be. Because it’s a new experience for me. So the workload was different, the pressure was different. It’s understandable that I was a bit off but I managed to strike at the critical moments, which I am happy about,” said Gukesh while speaking with BBC World on Friday morning.
With both the players tied at 6.5 each after 13 games, it was all left to the final game in the match on Thursday. The game looked towards a draw before Liren made a blunder in the 55th move of the game moving his rook from f4 to f2. Gukesh followed that with a rook exchange and with Gukesh’s bishop on the diagonal with Liren having no other option but to trade bishops too, the Indian with two pawns and the king against the Chinese’s one pawn and the king, would have won the game as Liren resigned. It made Gukesh the youngest World Champion since Garry Kasporov’s record in 1982. “I’m feeling great. Just when I won the match, I felt a bit overwhelmed but I had time to calm down and I feel great. I mean throughout the match, I had several chances to clinch victories and many of the games which would have put me on front foot quite seriously. But once I was getting closer, I was getting nervous and I was not able to finish him off. This game, the final game of the classical portion, I wasn’t. I wasn’t really expecting to win this position because it had a very drawing tendency. And then all of a sudden I realised that I am actually finishing the match right now. And it was a sudden change and I could not process all the new information so quickly,” Gukesh said of the last moments of the decider.
The 18-year-old Chennai native was quick to add that he just realised he could be in a winning position a couple of moves prior to the blunder by Liren. “Just a couple of moves. I had a sense that he was getting more and more nervous and I might have a good chance but yeah once he played the second to last move, I knew it’s over,” Gukesh further said when asked about when he realised he could win the match.
While his father Dr Rajnikanth was present during the title win on Thursday, Gukesh’s mother and other family members joined him in Singapore on Friday. When asked about his celebrations and winning the prize money of Rs 11.45 crore, Gukesh was quick to reply about celebrating with family. “Yeah, just a couple of hours back, my mom and my family came to Singapore from Chennai. I have met my mom but I am yet to meet my other family members and would like to spend some time with them. About the prize money, I am glad about that, especially for my family, it will mean a lot,” signed off Gukesh.
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