Aimchess Rapid tournament: India's 16-year-old Grandmaster D Gukesh has stunned the World champion Magnus Carlsen after he defeated him in the preliminary phase of Aimchess Rapid online chess. Gukesh has now become the youngest player to beat Carlsen since he has become the world champion.
The 16-year-old from Chennai beat the world No.1 with white pieces early on Monday to move up to the third position in the tournament behind Poland's Jan-Krzystof Duda (25 points) and Shakhriyar Mamedyarov (Azerbaijan, 23 points) with 21 points after the 12th round. Gukesh's 29-move dismantling of the world champion comes a day after his 19-year-old compatriot Arjun Erigaisi had posted a maiden win over the world champion.
Gukesh is 16 years 4 months 20 days while the previous record before his win was R Praggnanandhaa’s 39-move victory over Carlsen in the Airthings Masters in February. Pragg was 16 years 6 months and 10 days old when he defeated the world No.1.
The Indian on his part was quoted as saying after the momentous win: “Beating Magnus is always special, but I was not very proud of that game." Gukesh suffered a setback in round 10 when he lost to Duda but bounced back superbly to beat Mamedyarova and Eric Hansen in the next two rounds. Erigaisi has as many points (21) as Gukesh and is in fourth as the race for the spot in the knockout phase gets closer.
Gukesh continued what has been a superb year so far for the young Indian players as he became the third one to put it across Carlsen after Praggnanandhaa and Erigaisi, who did so at last month's Julius Baer Generation Cup online event. Even as Gukesh and Erigaisi underlined their talent and scored wins, the other Indians-Vidit Santhosh Gujrathi, Aditya Mittal and P Harikrishna- failed to impress.
Mittal (12 points) is in 12th place. He upset Erigaisi in round 12 after having lost his three previous games to Anish Giri (the Netherlands), Richard Rapport and David Anton Guijjaro in rounds 9, 10 and 11 respectively.
Harikrishna is 15th after 12 rounds of play and is out of contention to reach the quarterfinals. To his credit, he did, however, held Carlsen to a draw in the 10th round in a 76-move match. World champion Carlsen is in the fifth spot after having a quiet day.
