World Champion Gukesh Update

0:00 Ladies and gentlemen, we are living in truly unprecedented times in the world of chess. And what I'm talking about is the fact that we have the highest rated player in the world, the strongest player, many would say, Magnus Carlson, not actively playing in the world championship cycle. Frankly, he's not playing much classical chess at all these days. But we have a reigning and active champion, and his name is Gesh. Now, since Magnus vacated the title, every world champion has been put under the microscope since him. The good news for the microscope is that there have only been two world champions, so it doesn't have a particularly busy day in the office. We had Dinglen and now we have Gash. And this video is about Gash. Why? Because I think he has been

0:47 subjected to far too much scrutiny from newspapers, headlines, journals, websites since he became the world champ. Any good result he has, it becomes the biggest story. Any bad result he has, it becomes a massive debate of the world championship status. Gass just finished the Singfield Cup, one of the strongest tournaments of the year. I want to Why did I say that? Like I want to I don't know why I became British for that one word. I want to show you some of his games, his style, and talk about what I think the future holds for him. Uh so let's get into it, shall we? Here we go. I made one video about this tournament thus far and it was this first round game. If you haven't seen the game, I'm not going to go into detail in seven minutes of time. Uh like you know to analyze this game

1:33 and then 7 minutes 7 minutes each game. This one's going to be fast. Uh because this one is called Pragnanda beats Gh with 100% accuracy. And in that game uh Prague played a very good queen's pawn opening. Gesh spent a lot of time in the opening. It wasn't particularly clear what he was looking for. And then he retreated his bishop to the wrong square. It would have been slightly better to go back this way. And Prague played a perfect game. I mean, Prague applied great pressure. He got the two bishops and he he just simply got the advantage and he never looked back. It didn't matter that Gash has an uncompromising style or that he's a creative defender or that he's a tenacious fighter or he has an unbreakable spirit and will. At the end of the day, all of that didn't matter because Prague played an amazing game

2:20 and won. Now, this game in and of itself already has several stories and I'm going to tell you about them. There were recent interviews done. There was podcast I believe with Vishy Anand who is sort of the godfather of Indian chess and he actually touted Prague as the strongest of the young Indian players. Now, one thing you should know about Prague is that he played in the previous candidates. He played in the candidates tournament with Gesh at the same time. Uh, so he's already been at the elite level. He's also been friendly with Magnus Carlson. Magnus has invited him to training sessions for quite a long time. So, Bron has been sort of the target maybe for Indian chess. Uh, and at after this tournament, after beating Ukash, he won the tournament. He went on

3:07 to get five and a half out of nine tying with Fabiano Caruana and and Prague is up to number four in the world. This is two. This is a fascinating storyline even here. This is a rivalry. They are teammates at the Olympiad, but Prague is the fourth highest rated player in the world. It's Magnus Hikaru Fabi and Prague. He's around 10 to 12 points higher rated now, if not more, maybe close to 20 over Gesh. And we will talk about that later. Uh I actually uh look I I I have 2700 chess pulled up here. And yeah, Prague is rated 2785 and Gesh is 2767. It's 18 rating points higher. Prague has broken out and he is approaching 2800 very very rapidly. It would be his first time uh I believe breaking 2800. So this story line is very interesting because Prague is a

3:53 monster. But Gesh is the other part of the story. A lot of players they lose their first round of the tournament the way like he did they might go down. No, Gesh is not like that. Check out this very next game. He shows up the very next day to the tournament. All right. He's playing Najbec Abbus. It's a Spanish. It's a main line and Nobec plays what's called the open Spanish. Abto. You take on E4 and then you play B5 and D5. It's open because the E file is open, etc. So we have this B5 and uh white will win the pawn back on E5 and then black will uh just stabilize the center. Right? So we have this bishop here. Look at their

4:39 time. Both guys are kind of playing regular opening theory. D4, bishop C2, D3, bishop B1. All normal here. Here castles. All of this has been played before. You notice Gha's time. He started the game with 130. He's still playing moves without thinking. No is thinking a tiny bit. Now the best move is pawn to A4. Gesh knows that. Bishop to D6. And now pawn takes B5. So he spends around 8 minutes here. Uh that is one of the best moves. The other idea is to play bishop A2. Gh is showing world championship preparation. When you do a training camp for a world championship, your openings are incredible. 15 memorized moves. Clearly the homework has been done. Also, this position is the one of the most ridiculous I've ever

5:25 seen. Like, why is there a black pawn here? Why is it supported by a two horse and queen armada? There are two bishops. You castle that way opposite of your opponent, but all your pawns have been advanced, which means the game is going to get completely nuts. Like, no is trying to seal the position shut. Gesh kicks the knight away. This pawn is still a huge problem for white. No pawn in white's position can stop the pawn, right? We get knight back to D7. Gesh takes here helping no secure better control. And now look at this move. Rook A5. Totally chaotic game. These are the kinds of positions where Gash really really thrives. He loves positions where he gets 2 hours on the clock or 90 minutes on the clock and he can work them out. Nobody plays classical pure

6:12 classical chess uh of the Indian players and the Indian young stars like Gesh. That's why so much has been made of the rapid and blitz. Him playing 15-minute chess or 25minute chess or even blitz chess like threeminute chess. A lot has been made about the fact that he is not at the elite level just yet, but other players have gone through similar changes in their career and improvements in their career. Knight f3. Bishop d5 is now the best move. He probably should have taken. The position is way beyond my pay grade. I can't even begin to get into the specifics here. The knight goes to d4. Queen b7, right? Bishop to E3. Completely insane game. Completely insane. Rook E8. Nice move. Okay, he goes knight B6. Now knight back to D2 is apparently also an inaccuracy. Like none of the moves make any sense. I I like really I I just want to show you like

6:59 these types of games. One thing about Gash though is he is really clutch. He is really clutch. He has a way to keep the game going. And when the game is double-edged and has mutual chances, he will find a way down the stretch. He grabs the bishop. It's still extremely complicated. Game is on a knife's edge. He goes B5 looking for knight C6 rook here. Very complicated game, but it's going to end up being Nobbeck who will make the first mistake. Gesh 5 minutes to 10 down on time. High pressure position. H4. And the second Nobbeck makes a mistake. Gesh has three minutes on the clock. What is clutch factor in chess? It's when you make the right decisions down the stretch with time ticking. in classical chess in particular, not

7:46 rapid or blitz. Gesh is so good at this. For a guy that isn't excelling at blitz and rapid yet, which our formats were from the beginning of the game, you have 20 minutes. He is so good at locking in. His opponent plays one in accuracy. He immediately chops the knight. He takes and he plays queen A2 with an infiltration. And no has some engine ways to defend the game, but ultimately it's not going to be enough. His king is running. His pawn is strong, but it's not strong enough. And Gesh safeguarding his king, coming back to play defense. One thing about Gesh, like I said, he's a fighter. He lost that first game. Prague absolutely played the game of the

8:31 freaking tournament against him. All right, positional masterclass. Very next game, Kesh bounces back. A nasty game. I mean, this game was like a fist fight. Look at this position. Have you ever seen a sandwich of pieces like this on the D file? What are we even looking? But somehow he just finds a way to get it done. He's a fighter. Some of his games are gritty. This is how this is how we get get it done. Now, he didn't win and lose every single game, but in all of his games, it's never boring. Being a gash fan is really stressful. He because he doesn't show up to have calm, simple games. Watch this next game. He plays his teammate. Okay,

9:21 now I have to go full screen to make sure there are no spoilers for the rest of the video. I don't know why chess.com insists on doing this, but sometimes I Watch this. Just watch this. Okay, watch this. This this is ridiculous this game. So Duda his teammate for the world championship they like they literally work together to win the world championship. Uh we have a queen's gambit decline. Okay all normal E3 plays A6 B6 solid. All normal pawn takes bishop B2 bishop B7 G3. Duda is playing in a way to deliberately get Gh out of the opening, but Gesh knows what to do. Bishop D6, queen E7. He's not castling

10:07 because there's actually positions where with white uh if you do if you do uh castle this way, black can castle long. So, Gash is actually playing this in the best way possible. He's played this in a way that Duda played slightly inaccurately. So, Gh's opening preparation and knowledge really, really, really, really high. Now, we see A4. And here, black can already plant the knight on the E4 square, but Gash plays H5. H5 is crazy. Like, dude, he is coming in to take like this is his style. He's not a boring player. He's not a boring champ. He's not going to do any s dude's 19 years old. He is he is a fighter. His games are crazy. The problem is when

10:53 your games are crazy and you're not on your game, you can spin out of control very quickly. He puts the knight in the middle and very quickly Duda is just much worse. Like Duda is just getting pounded here. H3 incoming, shoving the bishop all the way back. Maybe pawn takes. You're never going to castle. You're not going to castle this way. White's hope is to play bishop A3. Trade the bishop. Queen A3. Trade the queen. Right. That's what Duda tries to do. Gesh plays queen E6. Doesn't want to trade. Doesn't want to trade all the pieces. He wants to take like this. play like this and play D5 and get a completely dominant position. Queen A3, we play knight F6. Not the best move. H3 was better, but it's tough to understand like what's the next move after H3. Gh tries to keep the tension. He plays knight F6. White goes knight C4. Rook D8

11:38 completely gives away a pawn. This is Gesh's style. This is Gesh's style. Gesh solves positions. He spends a lot of time in classical, which is why it's his best format. And he makes very practical decisions. Completely gives away a pawn. Gives away the pawn. Doesn't need it. And then he plays the best move, which is A5. How do you explain to somebody rook D8 giving up the pawn A5? Well, you limit the queen. Queen can't get any access. The bishop can go to A6 in some positions. D5 is threatening to trap the knight. Kind of sort of, right? Pawn takes H4. Rook takes H4, which

12:24 apparently is the wrong move. Again, the move, best move here is apparently bishop A6. So, this is the problem with playing ultra concrete chess because if it ever goes wrong, it ever goes wrong, Duda is going to make some problems for you. Queen G4, the bishop comes back and before you know it, Duda finds the brilliant move B5. The rook is hanging, but I'm gonna take and make a queen. And white is winning. So again, like I said, being a gash fan is just a heart attack waiting to happen. His games are crazy. When he's cooking, he's really cooking. Like he he understands every step of the way. But knight to G4. And after queen A2, Duda stopped the entire black attack

13:10 and the bishop is just hanging. And now Kesh takes the rook uh takes the rook over here. Rook C7 is again the best move threatening a mate. So, black has to come back. And now the winning move here is bishop to G2. You need to include bishop to G2. You're trying to sack the queen to get the trying to sack the bishop to get the mate. The queen goes back and then you take. You have to play bishop G2 before you take. Because if you do this, rook H2, there is no bishop G2. And I'm always threatening to get in here. So, I just win the race. You have to go for a queen trade. Gesh plays rook takes F2 and the game calms down a little bit. What did I say? Gh is so clutch. If you let him off the hook, he will

13:56 immediately. And that's exactly what he does. He's a fighter. So all these games show his style. A look at this. This position is ridiculous. Rook to B2. Knight C8. It looks like you're just making a queen. You block the rook, but there's knight E3. F2 is checkmate. Lukesh is threatening mate with a pawn. He has a minute. Knight takes D6 is a sacrifice. If you take, I queen with check and I take the pawn and you lose. So you go here, check here. And we get rid of the pawn. We get rid of the bishop. We stop that pawn. And yeah, in case you didn't have enough of a heart attack, obviously I'm still making a queen. And the game ends in a

14:41 repetition. It ends in a repetition because the king can't escape perpetual check. The king is crisscrossed, right? He's going to be hunted along these ranks until he runs out of oxygen. Ridiculous game, right? Completely ridiculous. Gesh was much better. He understood the opening really well. But when he when he when he misses, right? He gives his opponents chances. Imagine they pick up these points, right? Like imagine he lost this game. He's just he's just stressful. This the chess he play. Yo, check out this next game. Let me just make sure that again it didn't nothing went wrong. For some reason, it jumped ahead uh in in that last one. Uh look, all right, look at this. It's a game against Fuja. Very next game. All his games in this tournament were

15:26 stressful. If you're a fan, it's just stressful. E4 C5 D4, right? It's a Najdorf Sicilian. Okay, now he's going to end up playing here um a line. He's going to outpre his opponent by a bunch. Look at this. Rook E1. This is some line. Black plays knight C6. Bishop F1. Okay. A5. The knight. Oh my goodness. He went knight B3. Rook E1. Bishop F1. Knight D2. Crazy stuff. What are I mean? He's just he's trying to go here and here. He's going to play knight C4. He's trying to play knight E3. He's trying to completely dominate the D5 square. Look at the time advantage in the opening.

16:14 Dukesh builds up a 50minute time advantage. The guy has opening preparation like you wouldn't believe. And this is a result of training for a world championship. So he he is ready to detonate the prep on his opponents. Now, Fuja is one of the most creative players in the world, right? He's not just going to fall over. And by the way, if you compare their styles, Fuja is a rapid and blitz monster. He's a top three player in the world in speed chess. He's in the semi-final or the final against Magnus and Hikaru in everything. In classical, Gesh is still is is is better. Right now, look at this last move. Right. 18 minutes. 18 minutes. Queen B6. Now, Gukesh has to get that opening time advantage and positional advantage to a concrete advantage. Has

17:02 to go knight B5, knight D5. One of the moves he goes knight B5. He's looking for C3. Rook A3 was not the best move. He could have tried to build up a little bit over here. Doesn't particularly matter. Knight back to C3. He's looking for his moment. He's looking to break through. Suddenly, it starts going wrong. Ali Raza immediately understands the right maneuver, right? He's trying to get the knight out of the way, trying to increase this pressure here. Kesh has to get rid of the knight before it re-enters the battle. And very quickly, he's worse. And then very quickly, not only is he worse, he's going to end up being much worse. So Fuja here plays breathtaking chess, coordinating all his pieces. Look at the time. It's even. F5 is excellent controlling this knight. Rook B3, bishop G5, or bishop D8 were

17:49 both good moves. And suddenly, this is the worst position that we've had uh yet. If Fuja trades here, queen E6, takes rook E8 and just begins kind of massaging the position and slowly trying to win it, he's actually much better. I mean, I'm not going to say he's winning, but he's much better. King H8 is ultimately chosen. Not the right move. Allows Gh to preserve the pawn structure. What have I been saying this video? He's super clutch defensively coming back from a game, coming back from a loss like he did in the first round. He's super clutch. All right, he's slightly worse throughout this game, but we get into a time scramble and ultimately it's going to get into an endgame. This is just a draw. Even though black is a pawn up, it's going to be impossible to win this. And he's

18:36 going to try. He's going to try. He's well within his right to try everything. You keep your pawn defended. You trade, but you're not going to win this. You're not going to witness. You're not going to promote the pawn. It doesn't matter. The king gets close and this is an easy draw. Knight takes A5, giving up the knight and like this, right? So again, we see the same style. We see the excellent openings. We see the excellent time advantage, but we see the position slip up like in the game against Duda, but then we see very clutch defending. Now, that doesn't always happen. I also definitely heard uh I I keep going back here because I I'm pretty sure the boards are jumping ahead. I don't know. This is some sort

19:21 of bug. But anyway, now this game slightly different. So E4 from Wesley. So Gash plays a Berlin Berlin defense. Rook E1. This is all normal. Knight E5. This is some new line. It's a line that I that I'm quite fond of. Bishop B7. White plays bishop f1 takes. Takes. And there's a line here. Knight c3. And there's even a line here. Pawn to d4. So you can sacrifice the rook. And then you can start some sort of attack. Wesley is not going to do that. He goes back here. And Gash plays knight f5, which is a very combative move by the way. Uh it's not a move to make a draw. The move to make a draw is rook e8.

20:06 Like if you want to completely kill the game, you just play a move like rook E8. Um you catch goes knight f5 allowing knight d5 moves the bishop out to h4. So he's deliberately deliberately provoking a game because that's his style. Very provocative even in the most dry and boring opening G3. C6. Look at this. Right? like he's deliberately playing prep stuff that he's memorized that is super provocative. Bishop H3. Wesley finds the best move. Plays knight D4. The bishop's hanging, but the knight is hanging. Knight, pawn takes H4. Not the best move, by the way. The best move here was to bring the knight back according to the computer. But after this and pawn takes D5, this is our

20:52 game. So, Gash's prep has worked out again, but it's very provocative. I mean giving white the two bishops damaged pawns in the center, right? C3. Queen takes H4 now is the best move. Gosh finds it after spending 10 minutes. If pawn takes, obviously queen takes, bishop back to G2. Now the knight has to go back to F5. He finds that and now white should go D4 and he finds it. So this is our position. Now the move here for black, the best move for black is findable but quite difficult. The best move is to go A5. And the idea of A5 is not just to push the pawn. I think it's to bring the rook to this area. And then when white takes, you go

21:40 here and try to get out this bishop. Gosh starts with this move. So he never plays A5. I'm not exactly sure what the difference is, but A5 maybe maybe there is not a huge difference. Maybe there are something else that that can be done there, but bishop takes. Wesley uh sorry, Gashh plays bishop to E6. Sorry, Gh plays bishop to E6. I don't know why I feel like I'm mixing up their names. Takes rook E8. Very, very complicated position. And now rook E7. And rook E7 is apparently the wrong move. Apparently, what black has to do here is give up the rook completely, which is he goes here and

22:26 Wesley's like, "Okay, I'm going to be really solid." Gesh plays D5 and after queen F3 from this game, there was no coming back because Wesley is going to win material. He's his king is quite safe and he's going to have a dominant set of pawns in the endame, which means black has to create some problems. But Wesley almost has the perfect anti-gukesh style. Wesley is experienced. He's very strong and he's very solid. He's not going to allow unnecessary risk. It's not even the best move. Doesn't even matter. He trades. He's going to pick up a pawn. He's very good at consolidating his advantage. And he's very good on time. Wesley is also one of the best players in the world in speech. Chess. Rook D5. Rook G6. Kesh tries to create some problems,

23:12 complications, but Wesley just clean. very very professional. Wesley's a tough opponent. He's a really tough opponent and he never looked back. From this point of the game, Wesley almost played perfectly because Wesley has the perfect indie kukesh style. He's extremely solid. He's extremely annoying in the sense that once you give him something, he's not giving up. He's not He's not going to give it up. He's never going to take unnecessary risk. He's going to be super super practical. Sometimes too practical. And in this game, you know, Gesh played so risky. Like he could have, again, if you look at the opening database, knight F5 is a move. It is a move. But after that, knight D5 like to

23:58 go here is wild. Most people here play C6 and just so Ghatly deliberately played provocatively in the opening, but it backfired, right? And this is what I mean. He takes so much risk, right? Because he's always going for glory. Yo, look at this. Last game I'm going to show you is this game is the epitome of the Gesh effect of the fighter of the you know the fighting spirit and it's just it's just interesting to me because he is such an exciting world champion right and I don't think all this stuff about deserving not deserving is is justified at all. Okay, look C4. It's a Queens Indian against Leavonne. He plays very solid G3 B3. None of this matters

24:44 really. Uh what does matter is that Aronian improvises in the opening and he just simply lands himself in a worse position. Right? White has two bishops. White has a very pleasant game. And now Gh is going to go to work. But he has to outplay Levonne which is not any easy task. And quite quickly I think in this position A4 was the wrong choice. I don't exactly I think white should have played bishop takes and then went knight e4 and knight here right knight e4 knight there a4 instead bishop here I I think in one of these like moments gesh had a chance to continue his advantage yeah I think here rook g4 appeared uh and white needed to play f4 block out the rook and if f4 knight

25:33 takes f4 if you take. I take the bishop. There's bishop f3. Knight takes e2. Bishop g4. Knight c1. And then here maybe instead of taking, you have to play bishop h5 check first for reasons I uh at first glance don't completely understand. Yeah, I don't I don't I don't get it. Bishop h5 check. King f8. Bishop c1. Rook c6. Ah, you need to be able to move the bishop and give a check. That's that that's the point. So, bishop A3 and then you move the kick. Yeah. And bishop D1. Okay. All of that had to happen, right? Gash needed to see this this sequence. He went here and he lost his advantage, right? They had a big trade. It's still very complicated. Uh but he lost the

26:19 advantage that he had in the beginning of the game. So, king C2, rook B8, and we have this position. Now, when I saw this, I knew immediately what's going to happen. I knew immediately. I was like, we're going to play a 100 more moves. This is Gash. It's Gh, right? Like, this is what he does. He has this position against Levonne. He lost some of his advantage. He has the bishop and some pawns. He's going to try to win this game no matter what. Yeah, he really will. And guess what? Guess what? This dude's fighting spirit is going to get rewarded. He has a couple of extra pawns. He has five pawns to three. So, he's a bishop and two pawns for a rook. Now, watch. Right. You're going to keep going. Rook here. G H4. Just improvement. Look at their

27:05 time. Look at their time. Right now, they're going to get some bonus time here. They make the second time control. They make bonus time. But before you know it, all that time is going to go away as well. And Kesh equal, but he's looking to break through. He's trying to win this pawn. He's trying to use his pawn majority over here, right? And let it be known that as we approach move 50. And he tries to make some improvements. And he keeps playing and playing and making Leavonne think F5. G5 is on the table. Rook B2. Bishop G6. One of the pawns is going to go forward at some point. It's going to go forward. And guess who's winning? Guess who's winning out of absolutely nowhere. This is the This is the Magnesian effect. We've only seen one guy take people 80 90 moves into games and beat

27:50 them in the sixth and seventh hour, and that's Magnus. Gesh has that fighting spirit. Magnus has that endgame grind. Gesh has that fighting spirit. Rook E3 check. King B4. But it's not perfect yet because here, bishop to B6 apparently is the winning move. And after rook E4, you don't take. I mean, bishop B6, rook E4 is crazy, right? Like these types of things. This is the wrong move. The best move was bishop B6. So it's it's he's got the fighting spirit. Just little things like this. And now here's the craziest part about this game. It would not be a good cash game without a heart attack, right? How's there going to be a heart attack? White is going to walk in, take a pawn, and queen. Visually, by the way, this looks completely winning for white. Completely winning. Black still has to be very sharp. He's got to win pawns back. There he goes. Right. He's

28:36 winning the pawns. He's going to come here. There you go. Pawn is two squares from queening. Bishop H4 now. A7. King. King. Right. A7. King F5. King B6. H5. And in this position, you should play bishop here, bishop here, you come back, stop the pawn, king B7 here. You need to keep this protected. King B7, you give up the pawn for like this. Boom, boom, boom. It's probably going to end up being a draw. Gesh goes here. He's losing because black can go king G4 attacking the bishop sort of but more importantly black will get to the H2

29:24 square before the bishop. Gesh had to put his bishop on H2 and Gh just like in the Wesley game although in this game it's a slightly different thing gives an opponent a winning chance. It's like the fourth winning chance. Duda Fuja Wesley right and now king G4 and and and this infiltration is winning. Levon in his mind already prepared a draw and just goes rook H rook a8 and takes and it's just a draw. They drew and they drew the last round of the tournament as well. Gaz drew Fabi. Pretty straightforward game. Ultimately this tournament ends. It was very close. There's a playoff between Prague and Fabi. It's going on right now. You know, Prague might end up winning the

30:09 tournament. He and Prague has had an amazing 2025. Prague is extremely motivated by Gesh as the world champion, but Gukesh gets four. He gets eighth, right? And it was very close. Noc really struggled, right? And you get the feeling that Gesh creates chances to win in almost every game he plays, but he also creates chances to lose. And that is not a style that a guy like Wesley So has, who actually also got five and a half. So, I don't I don't quite understand. Maybe they're having a a playoff here of all three of them, right? But just you take a look at the world rankings. You see Gesh there, right? Eric Gy is three points higher rated than him. And Prague, 18 points. Prague is a monster right now. Absolute beast. Having a crazy year. And there is

30:56 a noticeable gap between six and seven. And Nobeck is going to fall even lower. I think if I refresh this, I think Nobeck already lost. Okay, that's cool, I guess. All right, that that that's great. All right, that was uh that was cool. Um anyway, uh that crashed, so that was nice. Uh my point being No fell even more. So there is a clear top three in the world. Magnus, Hikaru, Fabi, and then there's the three Indian players, Prague, Aragi, Gesh. And I just find this very fascinating. I've been saying it time and time again. I don't think any of the stuff about

31:41 Gheserving champion and having all these stories about him, a Magnus, whatever, I don't think it's fair. But it's compelling to see what's going to come next uh for his championship defenses. And as I showed you here, he's got fascinating qualities of a champion, but he takes so much risk. So much risk. It's not healthy for fans, and I don't know how healthy it's going to be for for for an ELO in the long run. Uh but fascinating times. Curious to see his development. And in October, he's going to play in a tournament here in St. Louis. Not here. I'm not in St. Louis. Uh against Magnus, Fabi, and Hikaro. So, that's your world champion update about 8 months after he won the title. And that's all I have for you today.