Checkmate! 

Eighteen-year-old Gukesh Dommaraju capped a stunning ascent to the pinnacle of chess by dethroning China’s Ding Liren to become the youngest-ever world champion recently in Singapore.

The teenager from Chennai dramatically snatched the decisive victory from a dead-drawn position in the final contest of their best-of-14-games showdown when Ding made one of the worst blunders in the 138-year history of world championship matchplay. The 32-year-old defending champion resigned moments later after a game that lasted 58 moves and just over four hours, sealing Gukesh’s 7½-6½ win in the three-week match and rendering moot the widely expected prospect of tiebreaker matches on the fateful day.

In doing so, Gukesh shattered the age record held by Garry Kasparov, who was 22 when he toppled Anatoly Karpov in 1985.

He also became the second Indian to win the global title after the legendary Viswanathan Anand, a five-time world champion. He had last won the crown in 2013.

A game that appeared bound for a peaceful result suddenly became complicated when Ding sacrificed a pawn in exchange for a simpler position. That left Gukesh with no choice but to fight on and he was more than happy to punish his foe in a gruelling endgame under mounting time pressure and that’s when Ding finally cracked.

 “It took some time to realise it,” Ding later said. Gukesh admitted he didn’t initially recognise Ding’s rook move as a blunder, saying it took a few seconds to spot that his opponent’s bishop was trapped. He could barely conceal his excitement upon the discovery, while a devastated Ding could only bury his head in his hands.

“When I realised it, it was probably the best moment of my life,” Gukesh was quoted as saying, bringing home the $1.35m (£1.06m) winner’s share of the $2.5m prize fund along with the sport’s most prestigious title.

 “I probably got so emotional because I did not really expect to win from that position,” he later added. “I was going to press it for as long as I could possibly press, but I thought, ‘It’s OK. We are going to play for five, six hours. It’s going to end in a draw, and let’s focus on the tiebreaks.’ But then suddenly after Rf2, I saw [the game] was actually done. I was already preparing myself to go through that huge tiebreak fight and suddenly it was all over and I had achieved my dream. I’m not someone who shows a lot of emotions, but I think this one can be forgiven.”

The toughest people break down under pressure, but for Gukesh, it was not the weight of expectations that overwhelmed him but the realisation that he had become the new World Chess Champion.  

For the teenager, the victory fulfilled a childhood dream. At the age of 11, in a video clip that later went viral, he told an interviewer “I want to be the youngest world chess champion.”

Gukesh D became the third-youngest grandmaster in history at 12 years and seven months. In April, at 17, he stunned the chess establishment by winning the eight-man Candidates tournament in Toronto to become the youngest-ever challenger for the world championship, finishing top of a stacked field that included Nepomniachtchi, Hikaru Nakamura and Fabiano Caruana.

That Gukesh was even playing for the world title was a historic achievement. Until April, teenagers had had an indifferent record in the Candidates over the years. Only Bobby Fischer in 1959 and Carlsen in 2006, both then 16, were younger than Gukesh.

Ding is renowned for his kind demeanour and defensive skills, having once achieved a record-breaking 100-game unbeaten streak. However, after defeating Ian Nepomniachtchi to claim the champion’s title in 2023, he struggled both on and off the board. Plagued by fatigue and depression, he dropped to 23rd in the world rankings.

In stark contrast, Gukesh has been a force of nature in 2024. He led the Indian team to an historic gold medal at the biennial Chess Olympiad, personally achieving a performance rating of 3,056 — the highest at the event, winning the gold medal on the top board.

The championship match — a series of 14 games held in Singapore — was marked by twists and turns. Ding was regarded as the clear underdog before play began, but he set the tone for tense battle when he pulled off a shock victory in game 1, playing black. In chess, the player with the white pieces has an advantage, so when games at the top level are not drawn it is usually the white player who comes out ahead.

Before game 14, Ding and Gukesh were tied with two wins each. It was widely expected the game would be a draw, setting the scene for a round of high-speed games to break the tie.

When the game began, Ding — playing white — achieved a small advantage out of the opening, but was unable to capitalise on it and instead settled for a technically equal endgame.

However, after four hours of play, just as the game seemed destined for a draw, Ding made the catastrophic blunder, handing Gukesh a decisive advantage.

On his 55th move, Ding offered a trade of rooks, attempting to simplify the position and steer the game towards a draw. However, this offered an opening for the young challenger to also trade off the remaining bishops and reach a winning king-and-pawn endgame. In the process, he secured his place as the 18th world chess champion.

Elite commentators such as former world champions Magnus Carlsen and Vladimir Kramnik and grandmasters Fabiano Caruana and Hikaru Nakamura criticised the quality of play throughout the match, with both players missing several key opportunities.

Following the final game, Carlsen labelled Ding’s fatal mistake “one of the worst blunders we’ve seen in a world championship.” Because the final position is a textbook chess endgame studied by all grandmasters in their youths, many expressed shock at the abrupt and anticlimactic conclusion to the sport’s most elite contest.

Yet the sheer drama of the three-week match, with its high stakes and emotional rollercoasters, kept millions of fans riveted across the globe.

Gukesh’s win may signal something larger: a generational shift, and the emergence of a new star in the universe of chess.

In his post-match press conference, Gukesh acknowledged that “becoming the World Champion doesn’t mean that I’m the best player in the world — there’s obviously Magnus”.

Carlsen himself remarked that Gukesh had shown the potential to “establish himself as the number-two player in the world”, before adding “and who knows, maybe in the not-too-distant future, the number one”.

The triumph of the 18-year-old Gukesh represents the dawn of a new era. His victory also underscores the growing influence of India — the gold medallists for both the Open and Women’s competitions at the recent chess Olympiad — in global chess.

Come 2025, the universe is set for a blockbuster clash as reigning World Champion D Gukesh takes on Magnus Carlsen, the world’s highest-rated player, at the

Norway Chess tournament. Scheduled to take place in Stavanger, Norway, from May 26 to June 6, 2025, the event promises to be an unmissable spectacle for fans across the globe. 

In 2023, Gukesh finished third in Stavanger, but this time, he returns as World Champion, ready to prove his mettle against the best, including Carlsen. 

For the latter, who ruled as World Champion for over a decade before stepping down, the showdown with Gukesh carries its own significance. Playing on home soil in front of his Norwegian fans, Carlsen’s experience and familiarity with the Norway Chess format could give him an edge.

However, all said and done, Gukesh’s triumph at the World Chess Championship 2024 is not just a historic milestone but also a profound testament to the power of determination, perseverance and focus — a lesson that we can all learn from the newly-crowned champion! 

Views expressed are personal