Fabiano Caruana explains why he picked world champion Gukesh as his opponent: ‘He has played more high-stakes games’

Fabiano Caruana defeated World Champions Gukesh in the first game of the quarter-final in the ongoing Weissenhaus leg of the Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour.

Freestyle Chess: World champion Gukesh faces Fabiano Caruana in the first game of the quarter-final at Weissenhaus on Sunday. (Screenshot: YouTube/Freestyle Chess)

Fabiano Caruana said he picked world champion Gukesh Dommaraju ahead of Nodirbek Abdusattorov and Hikaru Nakamura because of his experience of playing in the “high-stakes” game. Fabiano Caruana defeated World Champions Gukesh in the first game of the quarter-final in the ongoing Weissenhaus leg of the Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour.

“Well, the thing is I have to pick someone, I could flip a coin, right? But they’re both super strong players, I mean, maybe Gukesh is around 2790, maybe Nodirbek Abdusattorov is around 2780,” Carauna told Take Take Take after his win over Gukesh.

“I don’t know, it’s not like there’s a huge qualitative difference. Of course, Gukesh has the more experience in terms of playing for the World Championship, that’s a wealth of experience and winning the World Championship. And he’s played more high stakes games compared to Nodirbek Abdusattorov.

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“But Nodirbek Abdusattorov has advantages in terms of putting pressure on his opponent. Sometimes it doesn’t work out, like today I think playing a bit too fast and maybe not so carefully, but sometimes it’s very dangerous.

“So it’s a bit of a toss-up, you know? I think for me Gukesh was a bit more of an unknown than Nodirbek Abdusattorov in some ways, like we have a lot of experience against each other, we played a match here last year, and I just decided before that if it’s between… I was sure that Noderbeg would still be there because I thought Sindarov will probably not pick his countryman.

“So I thought, okay, if it’s between Nodirbek and Hikaru, I’ll probably pick Noderbeg, between Gukesh and Noderbeg, or Gukesh and Hikaru, I’ll probably pick Gukesh in that case.”

Caruana also explained how he felt after beating the 18-year-old world champion in the first match.

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“The win is great of course, especially in a game like that where anything could have happened, I could have definitely lost if things hadn’t gone my way,” he said.

“A draw and I would have been pretty reasonably satisfied with, although I was getting ambitious at some moment when I sacked his pawn with d5, queen b4, it was of course an ambitious idea.

“I wasn’t sure. I thought maybe I could play safer, but sometimes it feels like you should also take control of your own destiny.”