A pleasant win for India's teenage Grandmaster D Gukesh in the second round of the ongoing World Cup on Tuesday helped him to overtake India's veteran chess player Viswanathan Anand in live world (FIDE) rankings.
Gukesh's win came over Azerbaijan's Misratdin Iskandarov in 44 moves of the duo's second-round match. The teenager's live rating is 2755.9 after he earned two points recently and these two points made the real difference as they helped him in surpassing Anand, whose live rating is 2754.0.
A gain of two points enabled Gukesh to overtake Anand and replace him as the World No. 9 in the live rankings. Anand, who is a five-time world champion has slipped down to the tenth spot.
Arguably India's greatest Grandmaster ever, Anand has remained India's top-ranked chess player in all published lists since the turn of the year 1987 and broke into the world's top 10 for the first time in July 1991.
The International Chess Federation confirmed Gukesh's advancement in the rankings and also predicted that it is likely that he will be the highest-rated Indian player by the time the next FIDE rating list is released on September 1.
"Gukesh D won again today and has overcome Viswanathan Anand in live rating! There is still almost a month till next official FIDE rating list on September 1, but it's highly likely that 17-year-old will be making it to top 10 in the world as the highest-rated Indian player!," the International Chess Federation tweeted.
Gukesh's next fixture will be against S L Narayanan in the forthcoming third round. Meanwhile, the 17-year-old is not the only player from India to advance to the third round of the ongoing tournament, numerous other Indian players have also qualified for the third round.
Harika Dronavalli and R Vaishali have stormed into the third round in the women's section whereas GM R Praggnanandhaa who has a Maxime Lagarde title to his credit already and Nihal Sarin have made it to the third round in the men's section.
