Eighteen-year-old Indian prodigy Gukesh Dommaraju has become the new world chess champion, winning the final game of the title match after a dramatic blunder from the reigning champ, China’s Ding Liren.

Gukesh is now the youngest world champion in chess history, and the first Indian to hold the title since Vishwanathan Anand lost it to Magnus Carlsen in 2013.

Ding was gracious in defeat, saying

Considering [my play], it’s a fair result to lose in the end. I have no regrets. I will continue to play, and I hope I can show the strength like this time.

For Gukesh, the victory fulfilled a childhood dream. At the age of 11, in a video clip that later went viral, he told an interviewer “I want to be the youngest world chess champion.”

In a post-match press conference, Gukesh said spotting Ding’s blunder “was probably the best moment of my life”.

The road to the title

Ding became world champion in 2023 after an unlikely journey. He almost missed qualifying due to COVID lockdowns in China, and even then only made it into the championship match when Russian grandmaster Sergey Karjakin was disqualified over his support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Ding is renowned for his kind demeanour and defensive skills, having once achieved a record-breaking 100-game unbeaten streak. However, after defeating Ian Nepomniachtchi to claim the champion’s title in 2023, he struggled both on and off the board. Plagued by fatigue and depression, he dropped to 23rd in the world rankings.

In stark contrast, Gukesh has been a force of nature in 2024. He led the Indian team to an historic gold medal at the biennial Chess Olympiad, personally achieving a performance rating of 3,056 – the highest at the event, winning the gold medal on the top board.

Drama on the board

The championship match – a series of 14 games held in Singapore and sponsored by Google – was marked by twists and turns. Ding was regarded as the clear underdog before play began, but he set the tone for tense battle when he pulled off a shock victory in game 1, playing black. In chess, the player with the white pieces has an advantage, so when games at the top level are not drawn it is usually the white player who comes out ahead.

Before game 14, Ding and Gukesh were tied with two wins each. It was widely expected the game would be a draw, setting the scene for a round of high-speed games to break the tie.

When the game began, Ding – playing white – achieved a small advantage out of the opening, but was unable to capitalise on it and instead settled for a technically equal endgame.

However, after four hours of play, just as the game seemed destined for a draw, Ding made a catastrophic blunder, handing Gukesh a decisive advantage.

On his 55th move, Ding offered a trade of rooks, attempting to simplify the position and steer the game towards a draw. However, this offered an opening for the young challenger to also trade off the remaining bishops and reach a winning king-and-pawn endgame. In the process, he secured his place as the 18th world chess champion.

Elite commentators such as former world champions Magnus Carlsen and Vladimir Kramnik and grandmasters Fabiano Caruana and Hikaru Nakamura criticised the quality of play throughout the match, with both players missing several key opportunities.

Following the final game, Carlsen labelled Ding’s fatal mistake “one of the worst blunders we’ve seen in a world championship.” Because the final position is a textbook chess endgame studied by all grandmasters in their youths, many expressed shock at the abrupt and anticlimactic conclusion to the sport’s most elite contest.

Yet the sheer drama of the three-week match, with its high stakes and emotional rollercoasters, kept millions of fans riveted across the globe.

The Carlsen question

Hanging over the world chess championship is the presence of 34-year-old Norwegian Magnus Carlsen, widely regarded as the greatest chess player of all time. (Disclosure: I once played a drawn game with Carlsen, at the 2016 Chess Olympiad.) In 2022, citing a lack of motivation, Carlsen relinquished the title of world champion.

However, Carlsen continues to play chess, and he is still number one in the International Chess Federation (FIDE) rankings. His presence casts doubt on the idea that the winner of the championship is “the best player in the world”.

Gukesh’s victory, while historic, doesn’t resolve this debate. With a chess rating of 2,777 after this match, he will remain outside the world’s top three by rating. (Chess ratings are based on the Elo system, a complicated method for calculating the relative skill levels of players based on their previous wins and losses.)

Remarkably, he is not even the highest-rated Indian. His 21-year-old compatriot, Arjun Erigaisi, is rated 2,801.

Yet Gukesh’s win may signal something larger: a generational shift, and the emergence of a new star in the chess universe.

In his post-match press conference, Gukesh acknowledged that “becoming the World Champion doesn’t mean that I’m the best player in the world – there’s obviously Magnus”.

Carlsen himself remarked that Gukesh had shown the potential to “establish himself as the number-two player in the world”, before adding “and who knows, maybe in the not-too-distant future, the number one”.

What’s next for chess?

The triumph of the 18-year-old Gukesh represents the dawn of a new era. His victory also underscores the growing influence of India – the gold medallists for both the Open and Women’s competitions at the recent chess Olympiad – in global chess.

For Ding, the defeat is a heartbreaking end to a short, challenging reign. Yet his resilience in reaching this stage, despite his personal struggles, has not gone unnoticed by fans around the world.

The championship itself, as a showdown between players from China and India – two nations with over a billion people each – has captured global attention and highlighted the game’s surging popularity. Chess has experienced a renaissance in recent years, fuelled by the pandemic-induced shift to online play and pop-culture events such as the Netflix drama The Queen’s Gambit.

Platforms such as Chess.com and Lichess have turned the game into a spectator sport, with live commentary from grandmasters such as Carlsen and Nakamura drawing huge audiences. For India, Gukesh’s victory could ignite a new wave of chess enthusiasm, cementing the country’s status as a rising superpower in the game.

As chess fans celebrate the rise of a prodigy, the future of the sport looks brighter than ever.