Gukesh D

Dommaraju Gukesh (born 29 May 2006), is an Indian chess grandmaster.

Gukesh was born on 29 May 2006 in Chennai, Tamil Nadu into a Telugu family hailing from Godavari delta of Andhra Pradesh.

His father, Rajnikanth, is an ear, nose and throat surgeon, and his mother, Padma, is a microbiologist.

He learned to play chess at the age of seven.

He studies in Velammal Vidyalaya, Mel Ayanambakkam, Chennai.

He scored 8.5 points from 13 games (6 wins, 5 draws and 2 losses) to finish in a 4-way tie for 1st place.

In Round 12, he had a winning position against R Praggnanandhaa, but blundered into a threefold repetition.

In tiebreaks he defeated Anish Giri in semifinals but lost to Wei Yi in the finals.

Gukesh won the Under-9 section of the Asian School Chess Championships in 2015, and the World Youth Chess Championships in 2018 in the Under 12 category.

He also won five gold medals at the 2018 Asian Youth Chess Championships, in the U-12 individual rapid and blitz, U-12 team rapid and blitz, and the U-12 individual classical formats.

He completed the requirements for the title of International Master in March 2018 at the 34th Cappelle-la-Grande Open.

A chess prodigy, he is the third-youngest person in history to qualify for the title of Grandmaster, which FIDE awarded him in March 2019.

Gukesh became the second-youngest grandmaster in history on 15 January 2019, at the age of 12 years, 7 months, and 17 days.

He almost surpassed Sergey Karjakin as the youngest grandmaster ever, but missed the record by 17 days.

In June 2021, he won the Julius Baer Challengers Chess Tour, Gelfand Challenge, scoring 14 out of 19 points.

In August 2022, he began the 44th Chess Olympiad with a perfect score of 8/8, helping India-2 defeat the No. 1 ranked U.S. in the 8th match.

He finished with a score of 9 out 11, a 2867 Elo performance, earning the gold medal on the 1st board.

In October 2022, Gukesh became the youngest player to beat Magnus Carlsen since the latter became World Champion, in the Aimchess Rapid tournament.

In February 2023, Gukesh participated in the first edition of the WR Masters tournament in Düsseldorf, where he finished on 5½/9, tying for first place with Levon Aronian and Ian Nepomniachtchi.

He came second to Aronian in the tiebreaks.

In August 2023, Gukesh participated in the Chess World Cup 2023.

He advanced to Quarter Final of the tournament before being defeated by Magnus Carlsen.

During the tournament, he became the youngest player Ever to reach a rating of 2750+.

In the September 2023 rating list, Gukesh officially surpassed Viswanathan Anand as the top-ranked Indian player, marking the first time in 37 years that Anand was not the top-ranked Indian player.

In December 2023, with the end of the FIDE Circuit, Gukesh qualified for the 2024 Candidates Tournament.

Gukesh had placed second in the Circuit, but Fabiano Caruana, the winner, had already qualified through the World Cup.

In January 2024, Gukesh participated in the Tata Steel Chess Tournament 2024.