D Gukesh stages stunning comeback, secures last-gasp Freestyle Chess Grand Slam draw vs Alireza Firouzja at Weissenhaus

D Gukesh was in sensational form on Thursday, as he staged a sensational comeback to hold Alireza Firouzja to a draw, in their 7th position playoff match at the Weissenhaus leg of the ongoing Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour.

It was a closely-fought encounter and at one point, it looked like Gukesh would crumble to another defeat, but somehow managed to stage a comeback. Fans were left surprised as Gukesh used all his grit and experience to manage a draw. The evaluation bar was in Alireza’s favour for most parts of the game. Then the bar was down totally for Gukesh when Alireza had over 18 minutes left on his clock, and the Indian GM had only 47 seconds.

Gukesh had to take a defensive approach after an early blunder, but the important point came when Alireza decided to exchange rooks when he was a pawn up. The game was played over 92 moves and finally ended as a draw, giving Gukesh a fighting chance as he will now have the white pieces on Friday.

Meanwhile, Gukesh also lost in his previous match, crashing to a defeat against Hikaru Nakamura in the rapid tiebreaker round. Speaking to Chess.com, Nakamura analysed Gukesh’s weaknesses. He said, “I would say probably the biggest weakness Gukesh currently has is that when he gets low on time, I don’t think his intuition is that great, and he simply couldn’t work through the calculations.”

“I think it can only be to your disadvantage if you don’t analyze together. I don’t know why Gukesh doesn’t analyze with Fabiano. To me, that’s just insane. Whether I’m analyzing with Fabiano, or even if I’m not, I look at his game, and I just try to follow what he does. You know, I just believe in Fabiano, so it’s much easier if you can do that,” he added.

Meanwhile in the other fixtures, Vincent Keymer defeated Fabiano Caruana in the first game of their finals. On the other hand Hikaru Nakamura, Magnus Carlsen sealed wins, and Javokhir Sindarov and Nodirbek Abdusattorov fell to losses.