A 17-year-old from India will become the youngest player to challenge for the World Chess Championship crown after winning a major tournament in Canada. Gukesh Dommaraju will face reigning champion Ding Liren from China for another piece of history, after becoming the youngest player to win the prestigious Candidates Tournament.
“I’m just so relieved, so happy following this crazy game,” Gukesh said following his landmark triumph in Toronto on Sunday. “I was in the right mindset throughout the event. From start to end, I was in good spirits, fully motivated and I really wanted to win the event.”
A grandmaster since he was 12, he is now set to be the “youngest World Chess Championship challenger in history”, the International Chess Federation said. Asked how he felt about his history-making feats, the teenager said: “I don’t really care about youngest and all these records, but it’s a nice thing to say. Right now I’m mostly just happy about winning the tournament.”
Gukesh became India’s youngest grandmaster when he was just 12 years, seven months and 17 days old, but missed being the world’s youngest by 17 days. Eight players competed from April 4 in Toronto, but without the Norwegian multiple world champion Magnus Carlsen. The date and location of the world championship showdown have yet to be announced.
If Gukesh wins it he’ll become the youngest undisputed world chess champion in history. It should be mentioned that GM Ruslan Ponomariov won the knockout FIDE World Championship in 2002 at the age of 18, but at a time when the world title was split; GM Vladimir Kramnik, and the player he beat in a match in 2000, Garry Kasparov, didn’t participate.
Gukesh outscored Fabiano Caruana, Hikaru Nakamura and Ian Nepomniachthci by a half point — the three players who finished in shared second place were also the top three seeds at the double round-robin, not to mention the fact that Caruana and Nepo had already won previous editions of the event.
On Sunday, in a tense, almost six-hour game, Caruana was unable to finish off a winning position against Nepomniachtchi to extend the tournament one more day with tiebreaks. With a draw in that game, Gukesh’s draw against Nakamura was enough for the Indian to win the Candidates with nine points from 14 rounds, which was held over a three-week period.
Former Women’s World Champion Tan Zhongyi won the Women’s Candidates by a 1.5-point margin after leading the tournament the entire way through. She attained a winning advantage against Anna Muzychuk, but a draw was still enough to secure tournament victory. She will play Ju Wenjun in the next FIDE Women’s World Championship in 2025, which will be a rematch of their 2018 encounter where Tan lost.
Gukesh Dommaraju, who was one of three Indian players in the eight-man Candidates tournament, will face China’s Ding Liren for the World title later this year.
