17-year old Indian Grandmaster D Gukesh emerges as the youngest winner of the FIDE Candidates tournament and becomes the second Indian to qualify for the World Championship final.
After 14 rounds and over three weeks of play, 17-year-old D Gukesh qualified for the World Championship final, where he is slated to face China’s Ding Liren as the challenger. With this, Gukesh became the first teenager to reach the summit clash of Chess.
Gukesh had entered the competition as the third youngest player in the tournament history -after Bobby Fischer and Magnus Carlsen. On the way to a historic title win, he won five games and lost one against France’s Alireza Firouzja.
In the final round Gukesh held USA’s Hikaru Nakamura to a draw to emerge as the winner. He also became the second Indian, after Viswanathan Anand, to qualify for a World Championship final in the classical format.
