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For almost five minutes, Gukesh Dommaraju could not bear to look at the board or his opponent, Nodirbek Abdusattorov. (Chessbase India live stream Screengrabs)
For almost five minutes, Gukesh Dommaraju could not bear to look at the board or his opponent, Nodirbek Abdusattorov. He changed his posture over 15 times in that duration, each position displaying a different degree of torment with his hand covering his face. In the previous five rounds of the Tata Steel Chess tournament, Gukesh has been unusually chatty, usually being the one to speak to the opponent to try and analyze the game. Today, no words came out of his mouth when Abdusattorov tried twice to try and talk to the Indian.
It was that sort of a morale bruising result that leaves a bruise on the psyche. The world champion suffered his first defeat of the year at the Tata Steel tournament at the hands of Abdusattorov, thanks to a one-move blunder in the sixth round clash. Gukesh was shellshocked at himself for making the move and appeared to realise that he had made a fatal error a second after making it. He immediately resigned after Abdusattorov’s response.
Gukesh was shellshocked at himself for making the move and appeared to realise that he had made a fatal error a second after making it. He immediately resigned after Abdusattorov’s response. (Chessbase India live stream Screengrabs)
At the time of going to press, Aravindh Chithambaram had managed to play his way out of a terrible position to hold World Cup winner Javokhi Sindarov to a draw.
Gukesh’s fatal error was pushing his rook ahead by a square from g6 to g5, which in an online game would have felt like a mouse slip. After all, it left his pawn on f6 undefended from the prowling white queen on f5. Even Abdusattorov looked puzzled by the move when it happened, but quickly capitalised on the opponent’s error to claim the pawn and in the process fork Gukesh’s king and rook.
“Honestly, it’s very hard to recover from a game like this. Really hard,” said IM Soumya Swaminathan on the Chessbase India live stream. “This was just a lapse of concentration.”
Gukesh sat rooted at his seat long after the defeat, unable to process how he had blundered away an equal-ish position. What was harder to swallow was that the defeat came against Abdusattorov, who he had also lost to at the 2022 Chennai Olympiad, which had cost the young Indian team a much-deserved gold medal.
This was Gukesh’s first defeat at Wijk aan Zee, in what is the world champion’s first classical tournament of 2026, a year where he will defend his world championship crown in November-December. Gukesh had played out four draws in a row at the start of the tournament before winning his first game against Czech Republic’s Thai Dai Van Nguyen. That win had come just before Thursday’s rest day.
Amit Kamath is Assistant Editor at The Indian Express and is based in Mumbai. He primarily writes on chess and Olympic sports, and co-hosts the Game Time podcast, a weekly offering from Express Sports. He also writes a weekly chess column, On The Moves. ... Read More
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