Site icon NewsroomPost

Who is Gukesh D? Here’s all you need to know about the 17-year-old chess GM who dethroned Vishvanathan Anand to become India’s No.1 chess player

Gukesh achieved the feat by outshining Azerbaijan's Misratdin Iskandarov in just 44 moves in the second-round match of the world cup.

Newsroom Staff

New Delhi. Ending Vishvanathan Anand’s 36-year-long stay, his own protege and India’s youngest chess Grandmaster D Gukesh has become the world’s highest-ranked Indian chess player.

Announcing the same, The ICF on Friday informed that Gukesh, who now enjoys the 9th position in the ranking by the international chess federation (FIDE) has pushed his inspiration Vishvanathan down to the 10th position.

Gukesh achieved the historical feat by outshining Azerbaijan’s Misratdin Iskandarov in just 44 moves in the second-round match of the world cup.

With this victory, Gukesh has already taken over Anand in the live rankings and is very well expected to do the same in the official FIDE rating list that will be released on September 1.

FIDE rating list on August 4

Vishvanathan Anand praises the History maker

Feeling proud of Gukesh’s historical accomplishment, the CM of Tamil Nadu took to his Twitter handle and praised the talented teenager saying, “Congratulations Grandmaster Gukesh on your incredible achievement of entering the top 10 of the world (FIDE) rankings for the first time. Your determination and skill have propelled you to the top echelon of chess, making you the highest-rated Indian player.”

His dethroned mentor Vishvanath Anand also congratulated Gukesh via Twitter (X) saying, “Absolutely Proud! We started off with one GM, one World Champion and now we have two top ten players. Congratulations to the generation of Indian talent especially to our new No.1.”

Who is Gukesh?

Dommaraju Gukesh, better known as Gukehs D was born in the city of Chennai, which is also the birthplace of Indian chess master Anand, on May 26 2006. His father is a Doctor (ENT) by Profession while his mother identifies herself as a microbiologist.

The history maker had immense love for chess from the early days of his childhood seeing which, his first coach Mr.Bhaskar inspired him to learn the game at the young age of 7. Thanks to Mr. Bhaskar’s support and encouragement Gukesh earned himself the title of a FIDE-rated player in just a matter of six months.

From there, his new coach Vijayanand took charge of guidance and it was under his guidance that the little chess maestro became the Candidate master after trumping the 2015 Aisan school chess Championship.

After that, the teenager never looked behind and went on to win five Gold Aisan Youth Chess Championships in the year of 2018. He didn’t just stop there and even went on to earn the prestigious title of International Master at the mere age of 11 years and 9 months in 2018.

World’s third youngest chess Grandmaster

In 2019, Gukesh registered his name in the record books one more time by becoming India’s first and world’s second youngest Grandmaster of the world only next to GM Sergey Karjakin who is 17 days younger than him.

However, he further slipped to third position when New Jersey player Abhimanue Mishra snatched the crown from Krajakin and became the youngest person to achieve the feat at the age of 12 years 4 months and 25 days.

Coming back to Gukesh, the teenager took the next big step towards becoming the country’s highest-ranked chess master by defeating five-time champion Magun Carlsen. With the victory, He also made history by becoming the youngest one to defeat Carsen.

On his 17th Birthday in 2023, Gukesh once again made the world acknowledge his might by defeating Carlsen again, this time, in a rated game.