D Gukesh lost to Fabiano Caruana in the first game of their ongoing quarter-final clash at the Weissenhaus leg, of the ongoing Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour. Gukesh was handpicked by Caruana after the round-robin stage, and the India No. 1 crashed to a second straight loss. He had also lost to Magnus Carlsen in the final round of the preliminary stage.
Gukesh and Caruana will meet again on Monday and the reigning world champion will look to stage a comeback.
Gukesh’s weakness in non-classical format was perfectly showcased once again, as it had been in his defeat to Carlsen. It started off on an equal note, but soon the momentum shifted to Caruana’s favour, who secured the win with a sensational 40…Rf3!!
It was only on the 33rd move that Gukesh made the decisive blunder, and by that time both players were under three minutes. The game ended with Gukesh giving a long stare at the board and realising that Caruana was on course to give him checkmate and there was nothing he could do about it. On realization, the India No. 1 resigned.
The game turned out to be an all-out brawl initially, and it reached its climax when both players ended up on the 30-second increment added on each move, with no time added at move 40.
WATCH: D Gukesh resigns vs Fabiano Caruana
Speaking after the win, Caruana also explained why he selected Gukesh as his opponent for the quarter-final, despite the Indian GM being in good form. Speaking to Take Take Take application, he said, “Well, the thing is I have to pick someone. I could flip a coin, right? But they’re both super strong players. I mean, maybe Gukesh is around 2790. Maybe Nodirbek is around 2780. I don’t know. It’s not like there’s a huge qualitative difference. Of course, Gukesh has the more experience in terms of playing for the World Championship. That’s a wealth of experience and winning the World Championship. And he’s played more high-stakes moments compared to Nodirbek. But Nodirbek has advantages in terms of putting pressure on his opponents. Sometimes it doesn’t work out.”
“Like today, I think playing a bit too fast and maybe not so carefully. But sometimes it’s very dangerous. So it’s a bit of a toss-up. I think for me, Gukesh was a bit more… more of an unknown than Nodirbek in some ways. Like, we have a lot of experience against each other. We played a match here last year, and I just decided before that, like, if it’s between… I was, like, sure that Nodirbek would still be there, because I thought Sindarov will probably not pick his countryman. So I thought, okay, if it’s between Nodirbek and Hikaru, I’ll probably pick Nodirbek. Between Gukesh and Nodirbek, or Gukesh and Hikaru, I’ll probably pick Gukesh in that case,” he added.
