When Magnus Carlsen realised D Gukesh was a special talent
The World No 1 has spoken about the first time he sensed Gukesh was meant for bigger things.
The World No 1 has spoken about the first time he sensed Gukesh was meant for bigger things.
The World No 1 has spoken about the first time he sensed Gukesh was meant for bigger things.
A video clip showing Magnus Carlsen lavishing praises on World Chess Champion D Gukesh has come up. Norwegian Carlsen, who is a hard man to please when it comes to excellence in chess, spoke about the moment he realised the Indian teenager was meant for greatness.
"I noticed Gukesh around the time he became a grandmaster. He was 12 then, one of the youngest grandmasters of all time," Carlsen says in the video shared by Take Take Take. It is unclear when the video was shot.
Carlsen said he realised Gukesh's true potential during the Champions Chess Tour in 2021 when they played each other, arguably for the first time. Gukesh was about 15 and had started showing his potential at the top level.
"You could sense that he had something. He was playing an extremely ambitious kind of chess, which was not quite the same as others. At that time he did not have the strength to actually sustain that, so he actually lost a lot of games. But I think I drew my game against him, and he was actually better in that game."
Carsen said he could find the quality in Gukesh during that period when the Indian had not yet broken into the top 50 in the world. "I was thinking, this is a guy who is really trying to play proper ambitious chess. It felt like he definitely had something," Carlsen said.
Gukesh became the youngest world champion at 18 when he defeated China's Ding Liren in Singapore last December. Gukesh is currently ranked fourth in the world and first among Indians in live FIDE ratings.