Indian Teen Becomes World’s Youngest Chess Champion

Indian teenager Gukesh Dommaraju shocked the world of chess on Thursday when he became the youngest world champion at the age of just 18.

The Chennai-born prodigy defeated defending champion, China’s Ding Liren, in a dramatic match staged in Singapore which he had entered as the challenger.

The FIDE World Chess Championship carries a $2.5m (£1.96m) prize fund.
It marked the peak to date of his career, his greatest moment in a long string of achievements.

Gukesh became a grandmaster aged 12 years and seven months and even then, he was upfront about the fact that he dreamt of being the world champion.

In fact, he said he had harboured such ambitions since he was seven when he was a spectator at a World Title match between Viswanathan Anand and Magnus Carlsen in 2013.

As he confessed at the press conference following his dramatic win against Ding, he just didn’t think it would happen so soon.

Gukesh is the 18th world champion since Wilhelm Steinitz won what is considered the first title match way back in 1886.

Born in May 2006, Gukesh is also, by far, the youngest player to have ascended this pinnacle.

He comfortably improved upon the prior record held by Garry Kasparov (born April 1963) who was 22 when he won the title in Moscow in November 1985 by beating Anatoly Karpov.

The 14-game match was tied with two wins each after 13 games. It looked as though the 14th game was heading for a draw.

In that case, there would have been tiebreaks played at progressively shorter time controls.
But Ding blundered on move 55 and Gukesh exploited the error to clinch the title.

BBC/Ejiofor Ezeifeoma