In the Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour’s inaugural event in Weissenhaus, Germany world champion D Gukesh experienced a continued streak without wins. The 18-year-old D Gukesh lost his first quarterfinal match against world No.2 Fabiano Caruana on Sunday and then gave up the second game after just 18 moves on Monday when he needed a win.
He enters the battle for a classification spot between fifth and eighth place while the American player has moved into the semi-finals.
Gukesh’s Monday match with the Black pieces required a victory to advance to tie-breaks against the 2018 World Championship contestant yet the second quarterfinal game ended quickly. Facing a material deficit and having his King exposed with minimal counterplay options the Indian player chose resignation thus ending his semi-final contest.
Having faced defeats against Magnus Carlsen and Alireza Firouzja in the initial phase of the rapid round robin section Gukesh barely secured his position in the quarterfinals as the eighth seed.
He stunned commentators with his very calm heart rate of 61 during his first quarterfinal game against Caruana as detected by sensors. The match appeared unpredictable since both competitors reached time trouble during play. Facing what he thought was a definitive lost battle, Caruana demonstrated strong attacking instincts to secure a full point in this challenging game. Caruana mentioned that Gukesh’s premature resignation in Game 2 likely contributed to Sunday’s defeat.
“It really came down to yesterday. He had the potential to create additional difficulties during our match. He attempted to sacrifice his pawn to build imbalances but his compensation effort failed completely leaving him trapped in an early hopeless situation. Caruana explained that his opponent didn’t wish to extend the agony of the match because his likelihood of winning had dropped to nearly zero.
Because he was one of the leading players in the rapid section Caruana earned the privilege to select his quarterfinal opponent. His selection of Gukesh proved to be a successful decision.
Caruana admitted he had to choose an opponent because he could theoretically select someone randomly. Both competitors demonstrated top-level strength with Gukesh having a rating of 2790 and Nodirbek Abdusattorov standing at 2780.
The experience Gukesh gained from competing in and winning World Championships as well as his participation in numerous high stakes matches provided him with more experience than his competitor. In my opinion Gukesh seemed less familiar to me compared to Abdusattorov in several aspects.