Champ Started Moving Chess Pieces at Seven

New Delhi: Nurtured by parents who put their careers on hold for his growth and didn't hesitate to seek crowd-funding for his dreams, D Gukesh manifested his destiny as a seven-year-old and turned it into reality in just over a decade's time.The 18-year-old defeated Ding Liren of China to become the youngest ever world chess champion capping a fabulous year in which he has hardly put a foot wrong wherever he has shown up to compete.

But the journey to the top hasn't been the easiest ride and has involved sacrifices not only from him but also his parents -- ENT surgeon Dr Rajinikanth and Padma, a microbiologist.

Rajinikanth had to stop practice in 2017-18 as the father-son duo travelled across the world on a shoe-string budget when Gukesh chased the final GM norm, while his mother became the primary breadwinner, taking care of the household expenses.

"His parents have sacrificed a lot," Gukesh's childhood coach Vishnu Prasanna told PTI in April after he became the youngest challenger to the world title as a 17-year-old.

"While his father has almost surrendered his career. His mother has been supporting the family while his father has been travelling, and they hardly get to see each other," he recalled.

Gukesh became the third youngest Grandmaster in the history of chess when he achieved the feat at 12 years 7 months and 17 days. The Chennai-lad is also the third youngest to enter the elite 2700 Elo rating club and the youngest ever to scale the 2750 rating mark.

The year 2024 is without a shred of doubt the best of Gukesh's career.

He won the Candidates, was dominant on the top board to take team India to a gold medal in the recent chess Olympiad at Budapest, and the icing on the cake was his world title triumph in Singapore on Thursday.

His chess journey started with one hour and thrice-a-week lessons in 2013, the year Viswanathan Anand lost his world title to Norwegian maverick Magnus Carlsen.

Multiple-times age group championship winner, Gukesh became an International Master after a tournament in 2017 after a tournament in Cannes, France.

Early success of the young champion included gold-winning performance in under-9 Asian school championship and the World Youth Chess Championships in 2018 in the Under 12 category.

Gukesh's passion for the 64-square chess board prompted his parents to stop him from attending school full-time after Class IV.

It was in 2019 during a tournament in New Delhi that Gukesh became the second youngest Grandmaster in the history, a record that was then surpassed by only Sergey Karjakin of Russia but was later also broken by Abhimanyu Mishra, the Indian origin talent from USA.

The writing was on the wall in 2022 when Gukesh won an individual gold medal playing on top board for the Indian team, a performance he repeated at Budapest again.

In September 2022, he reached a rating of over 2700 for the first time and one month later he also became the youngest player ever to beat Magnus Carlsen, the reigning world champion at that time.

Next year also went well for him as he crossed the 2750 rating barrier and the only disappointing moment was when he was eliminated in the quarterfinals of the World Cup and the road to world championship looked closed.

However, last year in December, Gukesh got another opportunity as the Tamil Nadu Government came up with a strong closed-tournament that gave Gukesh the chance to have another shot as a win meant a ticket to Toronto for the Candidates.

The win also made him the third youngest ever to qualify for the Candidates' tournament behind Bobby Fischer and Magnus Carlsen.

And amid all this, Gukesh was without a sponsor and had to manage his finances through prize money and crowd-funding initiatives of parents.

Despite the many challenges, he went on to overtake his idol Anand as India's no.1 last year.

And it was a stroke of destiny that Anand was the one who went on to polish him in the Westbridge-Anand Chess Academy (WACA) that came into existence in 2020 during the peak of COVID-19 pandemic, which had put a halt to most sporting activities.

"During that period, we used to train at Vishwanathan Anand's academy and utilise the ample time that we had," Prasanna had said.

"Vishy has been his most important ambassador. Together, we used to discuss about him (Gukesh) and his future a lot, and we both would probably say the same thing to him."

Gukesh too has never missed an opportunity to express his gratitude towards Anand.

"Vishy sir has been a huge inspiration for me and I have heavily benefitted from his academy. I am truly grateful to him and wouldn't have been close to what I am now if it wasn't for him," Gukesh has often stated.

On Thursday, the lanky teenager, whose poker face while playing is the talk of the chess world, took the legacy of his mentor forward and repaid the sacrifices of his parents in every sense of the word.