D Gukesh won the World Chess Championship in Singapore, defeating the defending champion, Ding Liren. The match had reached the pivotal 14th game, in which both Grandmasters began on equal footing, and it appeared that Liren’s approach of forcing a tiebreaker was succeeding. Gukesh became only the second Indian grandmaster to win the title, behind Viswanathan Anand in 2000-02 and 2007-13. He gained almost 11 crore INR in just 17 days.
After becoming the world’s youngest chess champion, Gukesh decided to skip the year-ending Rapid and Blitz Championships. D Gukesh has an action-packed schedule in 2025. Including matches against Indian chess master Viswanathan Anand and World No. 1 Magnus Carlsen. Gukesh will face Carlsen and Anand on the Germany stage of the Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour 2025. It runs from February 7 to 14. He will also face Carlsen at Norway Chess 2025.
Gukesh’s 2025 season will begin with the Tata Steel Chess Tournament in the Netherlands. The event will also include Anish Giri, Erigaisi, Fabiano Caruana, and R Praggnanandhaa. Gukesh finished second last year, with China’s Wei Yi taking first. The Indian GM will also be looking to prove Carlsen wrong after the Norwegian dismissed his World Championship success. Gukesh, in reaction, issued a public challenge to Carlsen.
Carlsen Unfazed by Gukesh Challenge
Speaking during an event organised by WestBridge Capital, Gukesh said, Yeah, 2025 will offer a very tough challenge. A lot of new and interesting tournaments are coming up. The world championship was in the past. I’m very happy about it and all the awards and receptions. But now, I have started thinking about new goals, new tournaments, and new ways to prepare.
The GM further added, The goal, the approach will be the same, to give my best, to keep improving myself, and win as many tournaments as possible. So, I am looking forward to a fun year with a lot of learning, a lot of improvements, and hopefully a lot of good results. Recently he met with a famous business tycoon Gautam Adani.
