Bengaluru: For the second day in a row, world champion Gukesh suffered defeat from a winning position. For the second day in a row, he let slip a winning position. In Round 6 of the Chennai Grand Masters on Tuesday, the 20-year-old lost to M Pranesh after misplaying a winning position. Down on the clock, he couldn’t recover to hold the game as 19-year-old Pranesh, the lowest-rated player in the tournament, had a win in the bag in 39 moves.
Event Context
Pranesh – who qualified for the elite eight-player Masters section by virtue of winning the tournament’s Challengers event last year, was famously Vaishali’s travelling teammate for the Women’s Candidates this year, which she won. “I feel happy…I just wanted to play well and prove I’m one of them,’’ Pranesh said, when asked about his win over the world champion.
For Gukesh, it’s not a great place to be ahead of his November title defence against Javokhir Sindarov. He finds himself dead last in the standings for the second classical tournament in a row, after Norway Chess. He’s also down to 2702 Elo and a world ranking of 31, having lost 14 Elo points at this tournament alone.
If he loses to Hans Niemann in the final round of the tournament on Wednesday, he will fall out of the 2700 Elo club. His predecessor Ding Liren had a lowest published rating of 2728 in 2024, just ahead of their World Championship. The Chinese grandmaster managed to somewhat arrest the rating nosedive by playing fewer tournaments when he was struggling with his form.
Gukesh is at 1.5 points with three losses, three draws and zero wins in six rounds with one round left. French-Iranian grandmaster Alireza Firouzja leads the tournament standings with four points.
Gukesh still has time to fix, mend, and reset before the match. But that process will have to begin with understanding what he needs to do to rediscover himself.
Player Focus
At this point, Gukesh’s troubles seem more psychological than technical. What he perhaps needed, at some point after winning the title, was to step away from chess for a while. For a player of his nature, who thrives on and draws confidence from his own play, this is a significant blow just four months before his match. The deeper the spiral, the harder it can be to find his way back.
At this point, Gukesh’s troubles seem more psychological than technical. What he perhaps needed, at some point after winning the title, was to step away from chess for a while. For a player of his nature, who thrives on and draws confidence from his own play, this is a significant blow just four months before his match. The deeper the spiral, the harder it can be to find his way back.
Right after his loss on Tuesday, Gukesh methodically put the pieces back on the board, as he always does – even while sobbing after becoming world champion – and darted towards the exit, trying to beat the cameras. He stepped into the lift, turned away from the doors and waited for the metal enclosure to swallow him.
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From a worse position, Pranesh managed to shore up his resources and unleash a counterattack, with the clock working as an ally. Earlier this year, Pranesh was picked to travel with Vaishali by coach RB Ramesh and his wife Aarthie, since they believed his easy-going, unruffled nature would work as an antidote to her nature and help keep the mood in the camp light.
