Issue #39 — Dommaraju Gukesh

About This Issue

Indian grandmaster Gukesh has just won the Candidates Tournament and become the youngest ever World Chess Championship challenger!

Dommaraju Gukesh from India has reached the peak of the world’s elite by winning the 2024 Candidates Tournament held in Toronto, Canada. Moreover, Gukesh’s triumph has earned him a place in chess history as the youngest ever World Championship challenger! One of Gukesh’s peers, GM Prithu Gupta, highlights the key games and moments of Gukesh’s play in the Candidates, sharing insights from the knowledge gained at training sessions with former World Champions Vishy Anand and Vladimir Kramnik, who had a significant influence on the improvement of a whole generation of talented Indian youngsters.

BCM Editor Milan Dinic has interviewed the new World Championship challenger, and Gukesh highlights the importance of practicing yoga and meditation on a regular daily basis, marking it as the crucial change in his training routine, which helped him greatly to focus better at the chessboard and perform to his maximum.

It is quite notable that India has experienced a huge chess boom over the past few years. In order to learn and understand how and why this has happened, we asked the legends of chess in India – Vishy Anand, Sasikiran Krishnan and Sethuraman S.P. – to offer their explanations and views on various aspects of this boom and what the future may hold. Moreover, in his regular column, FM Dylan McClain deals with the forthcoming match between Gukesh and World Champion Ding Liren, raising questions as to whether this might be Gukesh’s “once in a lifetime” opportunity.

While Toronto was a huge success for Gukesh, it was certainly a disappointment for the U.S. grandmasters – Fabiano Caruana and Hikaru Nakamura – who finished in joint second place. GM John Burke reports on their play in the Candidates and points out the chances they missed. Finishing second is never easy, particularly when only first place matters. However, true champions are able to recover and even increase their hunger for competition after failures, as suggested by professor of psychology Dr. Corey Butler, who directs the spotlight on the psychological aspects of the final outcome in the Candidates, particularly for the two Americans.

That Toronto was not only about the actual play you can learn from the first-hand experience of Dylan Quercia, American journalist and filmmaker. Dylan had the privilege of attending this hotly contested event, as well as getting behind the scenes and sensing a number of side issues and informal meetings.

To conclude our extensive coverage of the Candidates, IM Dean Ippolito deals with the opening choices and novelties that were seen in Toronto, while GM Sarunas Sulskis presents an enterprising game from the Open section, as well as an attacking win by the winner of the Women’s Candidates, Tan Zhongyi. In addition, Sulskis dissects one of the crucial wins that enabled American GM Hans Niemann to top the prestigious Grenke Open in Germany.

Winning a team event back-to-back is a unique feat in itself. When the winners are high-school pupils and the event is the biggest team competition on American soil, this success is twice as hard to achieve. Pete Tamburro reports on the 2024 U.S. Amateur Team East held in Parsippany, NJ, presenting four amazing teenagers from New York who accomplished this feat for only the third time in its 53-year history!

In their respective regular columns, GM Jacob Aagaard continues his individual style of training on attacking chess – focusing on destroying the king’s position and also applying the concept of the color of the squares. GM Illia Nyzhnyk deals with the importance of aggression in middlegame play through a carefully chosen set of examples, enriched with exercises for solving. GM Alex Fishbein offers highly instructive answers as to why he studies endgames – stressing the significance of recognizing and applying patterns that can help you develop good chess instincts.

For those who enjoy statistics, our Features Editor FM Grayson Rorrer has prepared an overview of the most significant tournaments played in the U.S. over the past couple of months, as well as of tournaments abroad where American players were successful. We have also prepared FIDE rating lists of the top 10 and top 100 players worldwide and in the U.S., compared with data from April, so that changes are easily noticeable. World Correspondence Champion Jon Edwards gives valuable tips on how to set up a working environment in ChessBase by equipping it with reference databases, and FM Carsten Hansen reviews ten newly released chess books.

Finally, in “A Five Question Guide,” our guest is one of the world’s renowned coaches, GM Ramesh RB from India. The list of his most successful students includes Praggnanandhaa and his sister Vaishali, Aravindh Chithambaram, Daniel Naroditsky, Amin Tabatabaei and Karthikeyan Murali.

What’s Inside

• p.8 — Incredible Stamina and Nerves of Steel — 2024 Candidates Tournaments — GM Prithu Gupta
• p.22 — Yoga and Meditation! — Interview with GM Dommaraju Gukesh — Milan Dinic
• p.24 — Tough Fight and Missed Chances — Both American Representatives in Toronto Finished in Shared Second Place — GM John Burke
• p.55 — Meeting Gods and Goddesses — A Personal Feel from Toronto During the Candidates — Dylan Quercia
• p.76 — Does Silver Shine at All? — Chess Psychology — Dr. J. Corey Butler
• p.84 — Why Do I Study the Endgame? — Endings — GM Alex Fishbein
• p.98 — A 5 Question Guide from Chess Masters for the Next Generation — Grandmaster Ramesh RB

Inside the Issue