Traps, Tricks & Mistakes: Gukesh’s Painful Blunder
Indian GM Gukesh Dommaraju is one of India’s brightest chess talents and the second youngest GM in chess history.
In September 2023, he was ranked eighth in the world and first in India overtaking Anand, who for 37 years had been the reigning number one in the country.
Gukesh began to play chess at the age of seven as part of his school activities. He earned his candidate master (CM) title in 2015 after winning Asian School Chess Championships, in the under-9 section. In the following years Gukesh worked hard to achieve the international master (IM) title. He obtained his first IM norm in October 2017 at the First Friday tournament in Puchong, Malaysia. The second at the Moscow Open in 2018. And finally, the third on March 10, 2018, at the Cappelle la Grande Open. Gukesh was 11 years, nine months and nine days old.
Almost immediately he began his pursuit of the GM title which he achieved thanks to some luck. His first GM norm came in April 2018, at the Bangkok Open where Gukesh beat GM Nigel Short simply because Short forgot to press his clock in a superior position. The second GM norm came at the Orbis 2 GM event scoring 7.5/9 points. He obtained his final GM norm at the 17th Delhi International Grandmaster Open on January 15, 2019, becoming the second youngest GM in chess history. He was 12 years, 7 months and 17 days old at the time.
Gukesh’s chess career extraordinarily progressed in the next years. And in April 2024 he is one of the participants in the Candidates Tournament in Toronto.
However, Gukesh, as any chess player, is not immune from making mistakes and today’s game presents a dramatic one because in only one move, he went from winning the game to almost a self-mate.
It was certainly a heartbreaking defeat for Gukesh.
Seeing that even chess GM make mistakes and blunders is a consolation for us, simple amateurs. However, we must admit that at the club level, those mistakes happen more frequently than at the top level.
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