Indian teenage grandmaster D Gukesh stunned Magnus Carlsen in the ninth round of the preliminary round of the Aimchess Rapid online chess tournament, becoming the youngest person to beat the world champion.
The 16-year-old from Chennai beat the world no. after the 12th round.
Gukesh’s 29-hit dismantling of the world champion comes a day after 19-year-old compatriot Arjun Erigaisi scored a maiden victory over the world champion.
“Gukesh just became the youngest player ever to beat Magnus after he became WC! Hats off to the 16-year-old Indian superstar,’ said the Meltwater Champions Chess Tour, of which the Aimchess Rapid event is a part, on its Twitter feed.
Gukesh is 16 years 4 months 20 days old and the previous record before his win was R Praggnanandhaa’s 39-stroke victory over Carlsen at the Airthings Masters in February. Pragg was 16 years 6 months and 10 days old when he beat the world No.
The Indian was quoted as saying after the memorable win: ”Beating Magnus is always special, but I wasn’t very proud of that game. ” ” As a professional, I am happy with the way I played the match. Winning surely plays a vital role in boosting my confidence and I look forward to playing more matches,’ Gukesh told PTI.
Calling the win important, the Chennai player said playing Carlsen was always an interesting challenge and he looked forward to playing against him in the near future.
”It’s definitely an important victory. Playing with Carlsen is always an interesting challenge and I look forward to playing with him again in the near future,” he added.
When asked if there was any special preparation for the match against Carlsen, the Indian general manager said: ”I had a discussion with my coach, Vishnu Prasanna, about the playing styles of all the players. event players. We came up with a brief plan of what to play against each participant based on their style of play.” Subsequently, Gukesh suffered a setback in round 10 when he lost to Duda, but rebounded superbly to beat Mamedyarova and Eric Hansen in the next two rounds.
Erigaisi has as many points (21) as Gukesh and is fourth as the race for the knockout stage draws closer.
Erigaisi, 19, started the third day of preliminaries with a defeat against Mamedyarov before scoring against Hansen and the talented German Vincent Keymer. However, a defeat at the hands of fellow Indian Aditya Mittal in the 12th round spoiled what would have been a good day.
Gukesh continued what has been a superb year so far for young Indian players by becoming the third to put it on Carlsen after Praggnanandhaa and Erigaisi, who did so at the Julius Baer Generation Cup online event in the last month.
Even as Gukesh and Erigaisi highlighted their talent and picked up victories, the other Indians – Vidit Santhosh Gujrathi, Aditya Mittal and P Harikrishna – failed to impress.
Gujrathi sits in 10th place and out of knockout qualifying range with 14 points. He lost two of his four games against Duda and Hansen. He drew against Mamedyarov before ending the day with a win over Keymer.
Mittal (12 points) is in 12th place. He upset Erigaisi in round 12 after losing his previous three matches against Anish Giri (Netherlands), Richard Rapport and David Anton Guijjaro in rounds 9, 10 and 11 respectively.
Harikrishna is 15th after 12 rounds of play and is not in contention to reach the quarter-finals. To his credit, however, he held Carlsen to a draw in the 10th round in a 76-hit game.
World champion Carlsen is in fifth place after a quiet day. After losing to Gukesh, it drew against Harikrishna and world rapid champion Nodirkbek Abdusattorov and ended with a win over Daniel Naroditsky.
Gujrathi picked up an impressive victory over rapid world champion Abdusattorov but drew with Grandelius and Naroditsky and a defeat at the hands of Carlsen caught up with him.
The Aimchess Rapid tournament is part of the Meltwater Champions tour and brings together 16 players including five Indians. After the 15-round knockout, the top eight advance to knockouts.
(This story has not been edited by the Devdiscourse team and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)