D Gukesh blames Freestyle Chess woes on ‘intuition’ as Erigaisi performs better in Paris: ‘I’m not like Magnus Carlsen…’

D Gukesh’s Freestyle chess struggles continued as he finished in joint-11th position with fellow Indian Vidit Gujrathi. Meanwhile, R Praggnanandhaa had to settle for ninth spot. Arjun Erigaisi fared the best among the Indian contingent at the Paris Freestyle Chess Grand Slam event, coming fifth.

Speaking on Chess.com’s live stream of the Paris event recently, Gukesh also opened up on his struggles in the Chess960 format. He said, “I think the most challenging part for me in Freestyle Chess is that everybody can calculate and see tactics. But evaluating positions correctly, that is the most challenging, at least for me. Because a lot of positions and ideas are similar to standard chess but not exactly similar. And something which we think is good might not actually be good. Our intuition is simply not always correct in Freestyle.”

“Nobody knows the exact way. Some things that all the players are going, or at least I’m doing, is looking at the starting positions and think about the first few moves to learn some concepts or ideas and to solve some studies, because some positions are like studies.”

Not like Magnus or Vincent: D Gukesh

Comparing himself to the likes of Magnus Carlsen or Vincent Keymer, he added, “I found it very hard to calculate and evaluate here because there is much more to calculate here than in standard chess. In standard chess, you see three or four options you know are good and you calculate. Here you just don’t know which ones are the good moves. Maybe the players who have this kind of feeling for where the pieces belong like Magnus or Vincent… not everybody has that.”

Carlsen reigned supreme in Paris, as he beat World No. 2 Hikaru Nakamura in the final. Meanwhile, American GM Fabiano Caruana had to settle for third position. The World No. 1 has also taken over as Tour leader, with 40 points and 300,000 USD in prize money.