18-year-old becomes youngest chess world champion after opponent’s blunder

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With a dramatic victory Thursday in a deciding match, 18-year-old Gukesh Dommaraju became the youngest person to be crowned chess’s world champion.

Dommaraju broke a record set by Russia’s Garry Kasparov, who was 22 when he first became world champion in 1985. A native of India, Dommaraju dethroned defending champion Ding Liren of China.

“Since the time I started playing chess, since I was 6½-7, I have been dreaming about this, about living this moment for more than for ten years,” Dommaraju said at a news conference after the match, which was staged in Singapore. “Every chess player wants to experience this moment, and very few get the chance. To be one of them, the only way to explain it is I am living my dream.”

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Dommaraju’s triumph arrived just before the 14-match championship series, knotted at 6.5-6.5, appeared set to see another draw. Having played classical chess to that point, the tiebreak would have involved rapid chess, a discipline in which Ding would have been considered the superior player.

In the deciding match, Ding took what some observers saw as an early advantage before appearing to pull back and adopt a defensive approach, possibly with an eye toward a possible tiebreak round. While Dommaraju kept probing for an advantage, the match looked like it might stay deadlocked until Ding committed what he later acknowledged was a major gaffe.

With each side low on remaining pieces, Ding moved his rook back toward his king. That set up a sequence in which Dommaraju could quickly trade rooks and bishops and end up with a king and two pawns, to a king and just one pawn for Ding. The rook move elicited gasps of astonishment from chess analysts viewing remotely, as well as shouts of joy from supporters of Dommaraju.

“I was totally in shock when I realized I made a blunder,” Ding, 32, said at the news conference.

For his part, Dommaraju appeared to take a moment to recognize the advantage he’d been handed, then rubbed his face in seeming disbelief at what was about to unfold. He said later that he was planning to play a different move until he saw the path to victory that had been opened.

“When I realized that I was winning,” said Dommaraju, “it was probably the best moment of my life.”

“My congratulations to [Dommaraju] on his victory today,” Kasparov, who was more than four years older than Dommaraju during their respective breakthroughs, wrote on X. “He has summitted the highest peak of all: making his mother happy!”

Born and raised in the city of Chennai in southern India, Dommaraju became an officially recognized chess grand master at the age of just 12. At the time, he fell barely short of the record for youngest grand master set in 2002 by Russia’s Sergey Karjakin; both have since been passed by Abhimanyu Mishra of the United States, who was also 12 when he attained the coveted status in 2021.

Heading into Thursday, Dommaraju’s career highlights included a gold medal at the 2022 Chess Olympiad, staged in his hometown of Chennai by the International Chess Federation (FIDE), and he helped India win team gold at this year’s Olympiad in Budapest. In April, he won the Candidates Tournament, a FIDE event aimed at producing a challenger for the world championship.

Ding had finished second at the 2022 Candidates Tournament to Russia’s Ian Nepomniachtchi, who thereby won the right to challenge longtime world champion Magnus Carlsen. Shortly thereafter, Carlsen decided he was “not motivated” to defend his title, so Ding was elevated to square off with Nepomniachtchi last year for the vacated crown. Ding triumphed then in rapid-chess tiebreaks after the series with Nepomniachtchi ended tied at 7 apiece in classical chess.

By defeating Ding, Dommaraju became the second world champion from India, following Viswanathan Anand, who first accomplished the feat in 2000 and has repeated it four more times. Anand, who also hails from the Chennai region, saw his 37-year reign as India’s top-ranked chess player end in 2023 when he was overtaken by Dommaraju.

“This is the result of his unparalleled talent, hard work and unwavering determination,” Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi wrote of Dommaraju. “His triumph has not only etched his name in the annals of chess history but has also inspired millions of young minds to dream big and pursue excellence.”