D Gukesh scripted history in December last year, when he became the youngest-ever world chess champion. The 18-year-old achieved the feat by defeating defending champion Ding Liren in Singapore. It was a massive blunder from Liren in the decisive game which saw Gukesh seal his win, and it sent social media into a state of frenzy as fans and chess legends congratulated the Indian GM.
After the victory, Gukesh skipped the year-ending World Rapid and Blitz Championships in New York, which was riddled with controversies. He returned to action in Wijk aan Zee for the Tata Masters in January, and lost to R Praggnanandhaa in the title-deciding tie-breaker. Despite his defeat, his stunning run saw him climb to India No. 1, toppling Arjun Erigaisi from that position. But then Gukesh’s run ended at the Weissenhaus Freestyle Grand Slam, as he remained winless throughout his campaign, including defeats to Magnus Carlsen and Alireza Firouzja.
Magnus Carlsen compares D Gukesh to Alireza Firouzja
Recently Carlsen appeared on Joe Rogan’s podcast, and spoke about how the new generation of chess players have found different ways to develop, and also compared Firouzja to Gukesh.
“A few years ago, I had a training camp with a kid called Alireza Firouzja , he plays for France now, but he’s from Iran originally. He was about 14 then. And my chess coach had like recommended that we bring him in because he said that this is the most talented kid out there. So we have this camper. Typically everybody has their laptop and there’s a chess board in the middle. And you sort of look at your own thing and then some things together on the board and you throw out ideas, mostly for openings, but also sometimes other little exercises and so on.
“And this kid, he would have his laptop where he would analyze a certain position and then he would play games, like for money on that same site at the same time so that he could buy cloud engine, because the very best engines they’re stronger, if they’re in the cloud than from your own laptop generally. So he would buy time for that by playing games like one minute games on that server. He would play five minute games on another server and he would analyze with us on the board and he was thrilled like following everything like he had no problems whatsoever just being there. So that’s one way of doing it, like he basically became one of the best players in the world by just constantly playing chess all the time and mostly like really quick games.
“Then you have the current classical world champion from India, Gukesh. He doesn’t play casual games at all. He just studies his ass off all the time. He’s not good at rapid chess, he’s not good at blitz, he’s not good at other other forms, but he has he has made all his studies about classical chess. He didn’t even own chess software on his computer before he was like 13, and he was a grandmaster at that time. It’s interesting to see that there are such different ways to develop even these days”, he further added, with Rogan left in awe of the Indian GM.
Firouzja is a chess prodigy, having won the Iranian Chess C’ship at the age of 12 and got the GM title at 14. He left the Iranian Chess Federation in 2019 because of the country’s longstanding policy against competing vs Israeli players. He featured under the FIDE flag until mid-2021, and then became the French citizen, and now represents France.
