India’s 18-year-old prodigy Gukesh Dommaraju capped his meteoric rise by turning into the youngest world chess champion in historical past after defeating Ding Liren 7½-6½ in a tense championship in Singapore.
{The teenager}, already the youngest challenger to compete for the world title, gained the purpose required within the last of the best-of-14 basic video games to beat defending champion Ding, banking his share of the $2.5 million prize fund within the course of.
He turns into India’s second world chess champion, following five-time champion Viswanathan Anand, who final received the world title in 2013, and, as the game’s youngest-ever world champion, breaks the earlier file held by Garry Kasparov. In 1985, Kasparov, 22, dethroned Anatoly Karpov.
Gukesh was the in-form participant coming into the event, nevertheless it was a decent contest all through with the gamers stage on 6½ factors every with one classical recreation remaining. Ding made a one-move blunder late in Recreation 14, which handed Gukesh the title-winning level and prevented tiebreakers.
Ding Liren (R) and Gukesh Dommaraju compete in Recreation 1 on November 25, 2024. (Roslan Rahmanroslan Rahman/AFP through Getty Pictures)
It has been a outstanding few years for {the teenager}, the son of a surgeon and a microbiologist. Till the summer time of 2022, he was solely ranked as a junior. A grand grasp aged 12, seven months and 7 days (the second-youngest on the time), he has gone on to develop into the third youngest participant to succeed in a FIDE score of two,700 and the youngest to attain a score of two,750. Aged 17, in what was the ultimate spherical of qualifying for the world title, he overcame the percentages and obtained the higher of extra celebrated gamers on the Candidates Event to earn a title shot in opposition to Ding.
Ding, ranked twenty second on the earth, has had a tough reign as world champion, taking a nine-month break from the game final yr for psychological well being causes. Earlier than this Championship, he hadn’t received a classical recreation since January and had solely performed 44 classical video games since profitable the world title in April 2023.
He did properly to place in sturdy performances in Singapore, claiming a shock win within the opening recreation. One other victory within the twelfth recreation left the tie deadlocked. It had appeared that Gukesh had claimed a big win in Recreation 11 after a sequence of attracts between the 2 earlier than Ding fought again in Monday’s Recreation 12. A draw within the penultimate recreation left each inside touching distance of the trophy.
(Prime picture: Roslan Rahman/AFP through Getty Pictures)