Gukesh on a path to youngest GM ever

No pressure!

Gukesh scored his first GM norm at the Bangkok Open 2018. He has been slowly climbing up the ladder towards the GM title, but never really seemed that he would break Karjakin's world record of the youngest GM in the world. However, after his recent performances the boy has a realistic chance and is just one step away. Gukesh became the World Cadets under-12 champion with a whopping 10.0/11 score. With a live rating of 2466, he went to play the closed GM norm round-robin tournament in Paraćin, Serbia.

Players at the GM norm tournament in Paracin with Gukesh seated in the front row | Photo: paracinchess.weebly.com

Gukesh was the fourth seed and in order to get a GM norm he needed 7.0/9. Quite a tough task considering that he had three GMs above him. But the lad played some brilliant chess and look what he achieved: With a performance of 2744 Gukesh had scored seven points in eight rounds and achieved his second GM norm with one round to spare!

After the final round and a draw with black against a 2262 opponent, Gukesh's performance was 2665, far more than required for a GM norm. Here are his results:

Gukesh is born on May 29th, 2006. That means he has until December 29th, 2018 to break Karjakin's record of becoming the youngest GM in the world. With his performance in Paracin, he now has two GM norms and has pumped up his rating to 2487. He needs another ten Elo points and one GM norm to qualify for the title.

So what does Gukesh have on the cards now? Gukesh will also be playing at the Sunway Sitges Chess Festival from December 13th to the 23rd. Being quite a strong event, Gukesh has excellent chances of achieving his final GM norm and also the required rating points! Perhaps Gukesh can do what no one has been able to in the last 16 years!

Youngest grandmasters in history

Chess Prodigies Uncovered: Sergey Karjakin

Experience the meteoric rise of the youngest Grandmaster of all time into the world elite in specially selected master games. IM D'Costa presents brilliant victories in a new interactive training format with video feedback!

We have compiled a list of the youngest grandmasters in history. We will be updating this list, as new GMs under 15 years of age emerge.

See the full list

Gukesh playing GM Dragan Kosic in round seven | Photo: Nebojsa Radosavljevic

Gukesh against GM Dejan Pikula | Photo: Nebojsa Radosavljevic

Exactly two years ago, in a FirstPost interview, my friend and mentor Frederic Friedel predicted that "in five years, or at the very latest in ten years, of the top players, 30-40 per cent will be Indian, and of the top ten, four will be Indian grandmasters." It looks likely that he may be right. I pointed Gukesh out to him yesterday and asked him to what he attributed the spate of very young Indian boys suddenly reaching GM strength. His explanation: "It is clear that Tamil Nadu is conducting a scientific project to clone Anand. And they are succeeding!" Of course, this is tongue-in-cheek, but it would interest us to know what you think about the many mini-grandmasters.

Gukesh's best game from the event

Gukesh has played many excellent games from the Paracin event. But I really liked this win:

Final standings

Solid and safe against the Indian openings: Play the Fianchetto

The King''s Indian and Grunfeld are notoriously tricky and theoretical openings. The Fianchetto variation avoids the main lines which Black players enjoy, and goes for a small but safe edge. GM Nick Pert played the Fianchetto variation for over 20 years, and at the time of recording was unbeaten with White since November 2011!

Special thanks for this report to ChessBase India, currently the biggest chess news portal and chess software distributor in the country. The motto is “Powering Chess in India”.

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Links

• Official site
• Full results from Paraćin (Chess-Results)