Monitoring Desk
OSLO: What better birthday present for chess grandmaster Dommaraju Gukesh than defeating world number 1 and five-time champion Magnus Carlsen.
On his 17th birthday, the young Indian chess star defeated Magnus Carlsen in the blitz event prior to the Norwegian chess tournament.
After the game, the organizers presented Gukesh with a cake to celebrate both his birthday and his victory. When asked if he would prepare for the next day’s games by eating a lot of cake, he replied: “I wish.”
The blitz event in which Gukesh beat Carlsen was held to determine the seeding of each player in the classical event that followed. In the tournament, which is held in Stavanger, Norway, 10 players compete together in a round-robin scheme.
The winner will receive approximately US$68,400, while the runner-up will receive US$36,500.
In addition to Gukesh and Carlsen, a host of the world’s best players are competing, including Alireza Firouzja, Anish Giri, Wesley So, Hikaru Nakamura and Fabiano Caruana.
After three games in the official tournament, Gukesh is fourth in the standings, with one win, one loss and one draw.
Carlsen occupies the eighth position, without any victory, after two draws and one defeat. Caruana leads the classification.
Last week, Carlsen won his first tournament since relinquishing the world champion title he had held for a decade.
“It’s nice to show that my withdrawal only lasted a couple of days,” he said after winning the Superbet Rapid & Blitz tournament in Poland.
Gukesh has risen rapidly in chess after bursting onto the scene as a youngster.
He was 17 days short of becoming the youngest chess grandmaster in history, a title he obtained at 12 years, seven months and 17 days, just a few weeks more than Russian Sergey Karjakin. Abhimanyu Mishra has since broken the record, becoming the youngest chess grandmaster at 12 years, four months and 25 days.
