A tasteful 18th birthday present from Stavanger: 'Dommaraju, kings caught with their trousers down, it's time to take the throne!'

On 29 May 2024, Dommaraju Gukesh celebrated his eighteenth birthday. Of course, at least in the new chess superpower India, no one forgot: a queue of congratulators, a nice video summary of his career so far, lots of gifts. Perhaps the most tasteful, because symbolic, gift was given to the youngest challenger in chess history by his comrade-in-arms (well, also opponent) Praggnanandha! He dealt a model lesson in strategy and tactics to the „strongest chess player of all time,“ as many still proudly proclaim to the world. The famous cherry on the birthday cake was also a splendid Caruana lesson to the reigning world champion.

The following brief summary of the young challenger’s career so far, now eighteen years old, is certainly worth watching.

Stavanger 2024

The traditional tournament with an unusual scoring system has this year attracted a truly magnificent line-up.

Six participants play a double round-robin tournament. Even this year, the organisers did not abandon their tradition of replaying draws with armageddon clashes. In the event of a draw in the classical game, a blitz game follows, where White gets 10 minutes, Black 7. White must win to succeed (confirm the draw), and the loser of this tiebreak then loses a third of that original draw. Probably so the audience of the educated West can better orient themselves in the situation (fractions are tricky, aren’t they 🙂 ), for a win the player receives 3 points, in case of a draw the winner of the tiebreak is rewarded with 1.5 points, the loser receives a consolation prize in the form of one point. No one worries that the total points in the final table can theoretically be up to 1/6 lower.

If the main goal, that the system creators had was to increase decisiveness, then they are somewhat successful, but we should not look for a connection here. An incredible number of blunders in endgames has a much greater share! So huge that it deserves a separate analysis – an article.

Only in the third round did we see two decisive games, but not just any! The sixteenth and seventeenth world champions had to drink the cup of bitterness to the dregs. Not only did they lose the games, strength their resistance in games he almost approaches miniatures. Fabiano Caruana and Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa delivered excellent performances!

Toothless terminator

Let us give priority to a game of the reigning world champion Ding Liren and see how relatively easily Caruana, the long-time world number two, broke down his position.

What is happening to the world champion? Many have been asking this question since the beginning of the year. To somewhat balance Carlsen’s abilities in the example below, I have chosen for readers a taste from the times when Ding Liren could truly be spoken of in superlatives. Simply put: the evil Chinese terminator à la Arnold Schwarzenegger from 1984, one hundred games in a row without defeat…

The following armageddon battle, which took place at the end of the traditional Sinquefield Cup in 2019, will probably remain in my memory forever!

The phenomenon of the phenomenon Carlsen

Years ago, I named one of my works on my website this way. I compared one of the greatest chess geniuses here to J. R. Capablanca and entertained the heretical idea whether Magnus Carlsen might truly be the reincarnation of probably the most naturally gifted chess player of all time.

Before the outbreak of the covid madness and the global sociological experiment, I believed that Carlsen might soon face a truly worthy opponent (I was betting, for example, on Wei Yi). It did not happen, so over approximately four to five years a generation of young Eastern players had to mature. Only a blind person would not see how quickly they are pushing forward! True, I predict that it will take at most another two years before the youngsters can successfully fight and quite stably defeat the older generation, but then that turning point logically must come. It must, if chess remains as we know it, unchanged, and thus Magnus’s efforts to turn classical time controls into rapid or to promote so-called Fischer Random chess will not succeed.

I disagree with the views and opinions of the 16th world champion on almost everything (see the video below), but no one can deny his genius.

Before we dive into the analysis of the Praggnanandhaa vs. Carlsen game, dear readers, allow me to invite you to the following, which I may call a thought experiment.

Let us look at the diagram below. The task is: White mates in two moves.

I believe that stronger players, even if they are not exactly specialists or lovers of problems, will eventually find the solution. But let us also ask how long it will take you to discover the introduction…

Now let us watch how the former world champion handled the problem. You may be as captivated by his thoughts as the author!

There is nothing more to add here!

Debacle

The third round of the tournament, played on Gukesh's 18th birthday, also brought the following game, which I believe is characteristic for the future development of chess.

Chess needs fanatics

It always has been so, and hopefully always will be! The Indian enthusiast, journalist, and strong chess player with the fitting name Sagar Shah is truly a remarkable figure not only in Indian chess. Only when I matured and stopped focusing solely on the 64 squares did I begin to realise how invaluable these people are (at various levels)! They love chess and everything around it so much that they would sell their souls for it. Sagar loves chess, but naturally, he is above all a true patriot. His enthusiasm for the results and meteoric rise of Gukesh, Praggnanandhaa, Erigaisi, and many others sometimes seems almost comical to us Europeans. I was greatly amused when I watched Sagar's video and commentary on this game on ChessBase India (with 1.64 million subscribers!) and I believe this will also please the readers. Comments like 15.Rad1: „Fantastic move!“ 🙂 🙂 are truly unforgettable…

I still hope that the number of chess players who would like to ponder some situations or analyse a game more thoroughly, which a video simply cannot manage, has not yet dropped to zero. Below, I have therefore subjected the game to a detailed analysis. 

Well, yes, the former world champion has for more than a decade successfully showcased his strengths, which I have written about many times before. The most striking are his brilliant general intuition, which in technical positions works almost instinctively, colossal memory, lightning-fast associations, classical chess education, but especially physical fitness and unsurpassable mental endurance and will to win. That is why Carlsen's thrilling tournament finishes are so typical; it will likely be no different in Stavanger 2024!

The superlatives about his play go so far that many analysts are perhaps neither able nor willing (?) to see the obvious flaws in his play: calculation of concrete variations (in recent years there has also been laziness in dealing with complex thickets in the game, just like in Capablanca's later years), but especially uncertain handling of dynamics in positions with his own weakened king…

If classical chess survives the coming years and the world championship title does not fall to the value of a laurel wreath that FIDE hangs on a chosen lucky player every year or even half a year, as some dream today again (many may recall Iljumzhinov’s era as FIDE president, specifically the turn of the millennium) a considerable part of influential personalities, we truly have something to look forward to!

Let us hope that classical chess does not die yet, and will develop rather like this...

Below the reader will find all the examples also in the ChessBase viewer.