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Journalism of Courage
World champion Gukesh Dommaraju finds himself out of the top 10 spots in the FIDE ratings for October after the FIDE Grand Swiss, where he lost three games in a row and was held to four draws over the course of the 11-round tournament. The tournament cost him 15 ELO rating points and saw him fall out of the top 10 in rankings.
But Gukesh, in a recent interview, has spoken about the first time he played in a chess tournament as a kid, and lost five games in a row in a single day.
The youngest world champion in chess history was asked by ChessBase India in an interview if he remembered the first rated game he had won. At this Gukesh admitted that he did not remember, but added that he remembered that the first rating tournament that he played was the Chennai Open.
“I do remember the first tournament that I played which was probably not rated. It was like this local tournament that happens on Saturday and Sundays. (I don’t remember my first win there) But my mom has told me this a lot of times. Like what happened was that it was a two-day-long tournament. Five rounds on Saturday and four rounds on Sunday. So the first day I lost all five rounds. And the second day I won all four rounds. That was the first tournament that I played. Sometimes when I lose, I remember that even when I started it was like this, but I always managed to come back,” Gukesh told ChessBase India.
Gukesh will partner with Arjun Erigaisi, Divya Deshmukh, Sagar Shah and Ethan Vaze to represent India in an exhibition tournament in Arlington in the USA, called Checkmate: USA vs India. While Gukesh will take on Hikaru Nakamura, Arjun will face Fabiano Caruana. Divya will take on Carissa Yip.
