How Gukesh was celebrated in Poland: Face on coffee foam, cheering fans holding his name, helicopter ride and adoring kids playing chess

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Gukesh Chess champion Gukesh Dommaraju. (X-formerly known as Twitter)

Before he flew off to USA to compete in the St Louis Rapid and Blitz tournament, world chess champion Gukesh Dommaraju made a short pitstop in Poland, a country that became like a second home to him while he was preparing for last year’s world chess championship battle against Ding Liren. Gukesh was a special guest in the country, where he played in six blitz games against Jan-Krzysztof Duda, who helped him become a world champion.

And while Gukesh lost the six-game contest 5-1, the trip to Poland was made special by the local organisers’ gestures. For one, he rode in a helicopter to the Polish town of Ustroń, where the Ustroń Chess Festival was held. There, he was greeted by hundreds of young fans, holding a banner reading ‘Welcome Gukesh’. There were more surprises in store: at the coffee shop at one of the venues, the barista served him coffee where the foam on top was shaped in his likeness.

“I am very glad to be here to see all of you. I have been in Ustroń since yesterday, and I see the kind of chess enthusiasm that there is, and I am very glad to be part of this festival and hope you all had a great time over here and played some very interesting chess. Just keep loving chess, thank you for having me,” said Gukesh, addressing a hall full of kids playing chess.

Gukesh has a special connection with Poland, because his team for the world chess championship last year against Ding Liren was filled with more Polish members than Indians. This included his trainer since 2023 Grzegorz Gajewski and other Polish GMs like Radoslaw Wojtaszek, Jan-Krzysztof Duda and Jan Klimkowski. The team also had India’s Pentala Harikrishna and Germany’s Vincent Keymer.

“At one point I was spending more time in Warsaw than my home in Chennai,” Gukesh said at one point during his visit to Poland’s Katowice, where he had gone to play in an exhibition blitz event against Duda. Gukesh lost 5-1 to Duda.

Gukesh lost five games in a row

During the trip, Gukesh was handed a 5-1 defeat — which included the teenager losing five games in a row — in an exhibition blitz event in Poland’s Katowice by Duda, the man who helped the Indian teenager become the youngest world champion in chess history as a second (an aide) last year. The best-of-six games event saw Gukesh take a 1-0 lead in the start, but then lose five in a row.

Gukesh rarely competes in blitz tournaments. He prefers the calmer waters of classical chess, than the turbulence of blitz — at Katowice both players had three minutes on their clocks and got two-second increments per move.

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