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It was a horrendous day for the World Champion as he lost seven of his nine games, slipping to third place with 15.5 points, with nine more gruelling rounds of Blitz action waiting for him on Sunday. (PHOTO: Grand Chess Tour via Lennart Ootes)
Blitz chess is often called the most ruthless format of the sport. With shorter time controls, near-zero margin for error, and speed prioritised over precision, it stands as one of the trickier variants of chess. Naturally, it also exposes one’s vulnerabilities that the longer time controls often conceal.
Amid all the cacophony around teenage Classical World Champion Dommaraju Gukesh’s prowess in faster formats, the Chennai prodigy suffered a dramatic freefall on the first day of the Blitz event at the SuperUnited Rapid and Blitz Chess Tournament in Zagreb on Saturday.
Gukesh, who had dominated the Rapid section with a commanding three-point lead over second-placed Poland’s Jan-Krzysztof Duda — one of his seconds in the World Championship final against Ding Liren — managed just 1.5 points from nine rounds in the Blitz event. It was a horrendous day for the World Champion as he lost seven of his nine games, slipping to third place with 15.5 points, with nine more gruelling rounds of Blitz action waiting for him on Sunday.
One glaring absence in Gukesh’s play was his trademark shark-like focus. Against Wesley So and Nodirbek Abdusattorov, he was in complete control, only to collapse with one-move blunders in the endgame, setting a disastrous tone for the day. The bleeding continued as he dropped points in the next three rounds, losing to Jan-Krzysztof Duda, Magnus Carlsen, and Ivan Saric.
He salvaged a lone draw against Anish Giri before securing a morale-boosting win over Fabiano Caruana in the penultimate round.
The legendary Garry Kasparov asserted that Gukesh isn’t yet ready for Blitz. “It’s very fast, and Gukesh probably isn’t prepared to show his skills. In Blitz, every gram of energy wasted elsewhere has a very negative effect,” he remarked after the Indian’s loss to Carlsen.
“The games he lost today, some were just terrible. Losing to Magnus is understandable, but anyone can lose. Even then, we didn’t see his usual tenacity,” Kasparov added.
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Not all is lost for Gukesh as he still has a day left to stage a comeback and potentially retain his spot. R. Praggnanandhaa, the other Indian in the fray, had a mixed day where he scored 4.5 to slip to fourth in the overall standings with 13.5 points.
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