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Journalism of Courage
Grand Master Magnus Carlsen lauded 18-year-old World Champion Gukesh Dommaraju but at the same time criticised the youngster for not being “brave” when it mattered the most. In the last game of the round robin stage, Gukesh was handed a defeat by former world champion Magnus Carlsen.
“I think the game was very decent for a long time. I was very happy to get in this counter strike in the centre with e4, e5. I thought, I don’t know, I thought like my queen is controlling the diagonal, I always have these tricks with going rook e8 and then long castling and it felt like his position was a bit shaky,” Magnus told Take Take Take.
“Somehow I’d seen that he could play d4 but I was like one, hoping maybe he wouldn’t play it, two, hoping that I would find something and I checked it briefly afterwards, actually there is something with queen e8 and ip5, I mean that’s really difficult to find.
“So after that I was a bit disappointed because then the position was just equal and honestly after that I think it was just lack of experience on his part because he just took too many chances and then when it was time to be a little bit, he was really brave and then when it was time to be brave again he retreated but by the time he retreated it was very difficult to hold this position in practise and at that point I thought my winning chances were great.”
During the World Chess Championship against the reigning world champion Ding Liren, Magnus Carlsen had said he was not impressed with Gukesh. Carlsen has criticised Gukesh’s clock handling, and the way he went into an endgame when it didn’t seem necessary.
“No, no, I think the endgame itself was completely fine, of course I have this protected pass bonds but his pieces are so well placed that he should never really get in trouble.
“I think it was later, he could have for instance exchanged rooks at some point which is just a dead draw at a couple of points and it’s a thing we talked about earlier as well, he wasn’t really playing by hand, he was trying to do a little bit too much.”
Despite playing out seven draws (and being handed two defeats by Alireza Firouzja and Carlsen), Gukesh has qualified for the quarter-finals in Weissenhaus after ending in eighth spot out of 10 contenders. Gukesh will take on Fabiano Caruana in the last eight.
“I think honestly there was not a single point in the game where it was realistic that he could play for a win, that hasn’t stopped him from playing for a win in the past but I think the practical chances were always with me, especially with the time and what generally happens there is that when things start going downhill they just collapse because as soon as I get my pieces going this pawn, if not located, is just unstoppable,” said Carlsen.
