Gukesh Wins 2024 FIDE World Chess Championship with Stunning Last-Round Victory

18 for 18: 18-year-old Gukesh Dommaraju Becomes 18th Undisputed World Chess Champion

Image

Image Caption

Photo courtesy Eng Chin An/FIDE

Indian GM Gukesh Dommaraju defeated reigning FIDE World Champion GM Ding Liren (China) in the 14th and final game of the 2024 FIDE World Chess Championship, winning the match 7½–6½ on Thursday, December 12 after two-and-a-half weeks of play.

At 18 years old, Gukesh becomes the youngest champion in history, breaking GM Garry Kasparov's record by four years. Gukesh is only the second Indian player to win the title, following GM Viswanathan Anand, who was FIDE World Champion from 2000 through 2002 and undisputed World Champion from 2007 until losing to GM Magnus Carlsen in 2013. This was Ding's first championship match since defeating Russian GM Ian Nepomniachtchi in tiebreakers last April to become the 17th undisputed world champion.  

He entered as the Challenger; he exited as the WORLD CHAMPION! @DGukesh 🇮🇳 👏 ♟️

🔥 Gukesh D leaves the venue right after becoming World Champion! A big hug with his dad, Dr. Rajinikanth, a big hug with his second, Grzegorz Gajewski, and off to the bus for the final press… pic.twitter.com/94UVZRgulK

— International Chess Federation (@FIDE_chess) December 12, 2024

This was never going to be an easy match to predict, as evidenced by US Chess Marketing and Communications Manager Bryan Tillis's video summarizing the differing opinions of multiple grandmasters. Ding had plummeted out of the world top five rankings into the 20s, while Gukesh had risen in that same time from the 20s into the top five. The match would be one of youth versus experience, momentum versus longevity. 

Rounds 11 through 14 encapsulated the frenetic uncertainty of the match in a nutshell. Depending on when the viewer tuned in, Gukesh could be up an hour on the clock and totally in control, or he could be quickly burning time as he drifts towards a worse position by following an inaccurate plan. Ding was equally likely to confidently blitz out the only defensive move in a tough position or make a game-ending blunder in a relatively tame one. 

After trading wins before Tuesday's final rest day, Gukesh entered the penultimate round with the white pieces. The longer the match went on, the more comfortable Ding seemed taking the match to tiebreakers. After all, Ding won the 2023 match this way, and, despite being behind on the clock in most games, he seemed to be at his most comfortable when short on time. 

If Gukesh ever considered trying to play it safe (and he almost certainly never did), he definitely was no longer going to follow that strategy now. Indeed, he came prepared with a novelty out of the opening on Wednesday against Ding's French Defense, and managed to achieve in an incredibly promising position shortly thereafter. Today's annotations come from Chess Life columnist GM Joel Benjamin:

As if Ding's 12th-round counter-punch after losing the 11th game wasn't shocking enough, the way he survived this game was positively Rasputin-esque. If Ding can draw despite being caught off guard in the opening, missing Gukesh's 22. Bf4!, and then allowing a royal family fork, what will it take to defeat this guy?! 

Avoiding disaster, however, made Ding even more confident in his strategy to just survive the last classical game and make it to Friday's rapid tiebreakers. It's hard to say whether this itself was a mistake, as pushing too hard to win in an even match could also have easily backfired. But, instead, Ding became a bit impatient to rush into a pawn-down endgame for the second consecutive game. As Benjamin points out, it's one thing to play like this in a pure rook-and-pawn endgame with pawns on the same side, but quite another with the presence of same-colored bishops.

Of Ding's catastrophic 55. Rf2??, Benjamin writes, "We have a moment that will live on in chess infamy," and it is hard to argue with that. As Benjamin explains in the annotations above, the downside to playing for a draw is that it can become increasingly to overlook key details and hallucinate a forced draw that isn't there. 

"No game tomorrow," was the first thing a despondent Ding had to say in the post-game press conference. The 17th World Champion had always been admirably and uniquely candid in discussing his own emotions and feelings both during his last match and in the lead-up to this one, and there was nothing much else to say. He was aware that he was not playing his best chess, and that he would need to step it up if he wanted to defend his title. For much of this match, he was playing at a higher level than his recent form, referring to his 12th-round victory as perhaps his best win in several years. But the cruelty of chess is such that it only takes one lapse in judgment to undo a game's worth (or a match's worth) of good moves. 

What's next for Ding? In the past, the loser of the championship match was automatically slotted into the next Candidates tournament, but changes made earlier this year did away with this qualification spot. If Ding wants another shot at the title, then, we should expect to see him playing rather regularly in 2025.

Image

Image Caption

Photo courtesy Eng Chin An/FIDE

With the match over, it was finally time for Gukesh to reveal his team of seconds. While the inclusion of Anand was hardly a secret and countryman Pentala Harikrishna's inclusion also expected, the rest of the list was a global who's who of top talent:

Gukesh has now revealed his winning team:
🇵🇱 Grzegorz Gajewski
🇵🇱 Radoslaw Wojtaszek
🇮🇳 Pentala Harikrishna
🇩🇪 Vincent Keymer
🇵🇱 Jan-Krzysztof Duda
🇵🇱 Jan Klimkowski
🇮🇳 Vishy Anand
🇿🇦 Paddy Upton pic.twitter.com/NyEfLWXL44

— Chess.com (@chesscom) December 12, 2024

Next up for Gukesh is the 2024 FIDE World Rapid & Blitz Championship, beginning December 26 in New York. It's easy to miss the World Champion on the list of participants, as his outdated rapid rating of 2654 has him seeded only 25th. But first, Gukesh has planned some rest and relaxation with his team:

🇮🇳 Gukesh D will be going Bungee jumping! 
He reveals how the decision to go bungee jumping came about! 🪂#DingGukesh pic.twitter.com/cDwpP75jLM

— International Chess Federation (@FIDE_chess) December 12, 2024