Reigning world champion D Gukesh has stunned chess great Magnus Carlsen once again. He defeated the Norwegian chess grandmaster in the sixth round of Grand Chess Tour SuperUnited Rapid 2025 in Zagreb, Croatia on Thursday. With the victory, Gukesh took the top spot individually at the ongoing competition. The Indian grand master shared the top spot at the end of play on Day 1 and he continued his good form on the second day as well. Gukesh started the second day with a win over Uzbekistan’s Nodirbek Abdusattorov in the fourth round and then defeated American grandmaster Fabiano Caruana in the fifth round.
After this came his match with Carlsen and Gukesh triumphed in that as well with black pieces. This was Gukesh’s fifth win in a row at the tournament. Interestingly, this victory came after Carlsen termed Gukesh ‘one of the weaker players’ at the event.
“Gukesh hasn’t done anything to indicate that he’s going to do well in such a tournament,” Carlsen had said in an interview before the tournament.
“Gukesh actually played quite well here last time. But it remains to be proven that he’s one of the best players in such a format. This is a very, very strong field that we have here. Players like Gukesh and Anish Giri… they have a lot to prove because there aren’t a lot of players you can feast on. In the course of 27 rounds, things usually show. I hope for Gukesh’s sake that he can play better, but playing him in this tournament I will sort of approach it as I’m playing one of the presumably weaker players in the tournament actually,” he had added.
Starting the tournament with a loss against Duda, Gukesh overpowered a reckless Alireza Firouzja of France before defeating compatriot R Praggnanandhaa to reach on four points out of a possible six.
Carlsen beat Wesley So and drew his remaining two games against local star Ivan Saric and Duda to match Gukesh on points, while Wesley was the only other player involved in all decisive games, apart from Gukesh, as he put it across his US compatriot Fabiano Caruana and Anish Giri of Holland.
In-form Praggnanandhaa had a tough day in office on the first day as he drew with Firouzja and Nodirbek Abdusattorov of Uzbekistan with the loss against Gukesh costing him dearly.
(With PTI Inputs)
