How a 12-year-old demystified Tal

In April 2019, at the invitation of Frederic Friedel, a number of young Indians such as Nihal Sarin (14) and Dommaraju Gukesh (12) came to Hamburg to ChessBase for some endgame training. This included my giving them sets of problems with tactical problems. Including one with twelve magical combinations of Tal, to be solved in a total of ten minutes.

Attack like a Super Grandmaster

In this Fritztrainer: “Attack like a Super GM” with Gukesh we touch upon all aspects of his play, with special emphasis on how you can become a better attacking player.

That's me, working with Savitha Shri, Gukesh and Siddarth in the ChessBase office in Hamburg. Watching in the background is Gukesh's father Rajinikanth.

Incidentally, Gukesh got everything right on my task sheet with twelve combinations, requiring only a little more than half the time allocated. And here is a video with an impression of how our training sessions were conducted.

And this is me being challenged by a 12-year-old in an Endgame Magic recording

Second-youngest GM of all time

Dommaraju Gukesh, born on 29 May 2006 in Chennai, was awarded the title of FIDE Grandmaster in March 2019. This made him the second-youngest person to ever receive this title – after Sergei Karjakin, who became a grandmaster in 2002 at the age of twelve years and seven months. Gukesh met the required standards in April 2018 at the 18th Bangkok Open, in December 2018 at a GM tournament in Paracin, Serbia, and in January 2019 at the Delhi Open. He also won the 2018 World Youth Championship in the U12 age group in Santiago de Compostela, Spain.

The Endgame Academy Vol.1: Checkmate & pawn endgames

From Mating with a queen; a rook; two bishops; a knight and a bishop; to the basics of pawn endgames – here you will gain the necessary know-how to turn your endgame advantages into victories!