Winning gold was one of my goals this year: Gukesh

GM D. Gukesh leads Indian men's chess team to historic first place finish in Chess Olympiad, aiming for FIDE world championship.

GM D. Gukesh was the lodestar in the Chess Olympiad along with Arjun Erigaisi for the Indian men’s team. The two playing on board one and three respectively in Budapest, won the individual gold medals while guiding the team to a historic first place finish.

And the celebrations at the prize distribution function where Tania Sachdev and Gukesh made a Messi-like walk proved how much the team (men & women) wanted the gold medals. Gukesh said not able to win gold in Chennai Olympiad in 2022 was a great regret especially after coming so close. “It is very special. We had players in both men and women who had played in quite a few Olympiads and not won it. It was a great regret for them and for me too. I really wanted to win gold this time. It was one of the biggest goals this year. Finally, we did it as a team. With Harika akka having played so many Olympiads (she has played in 10), and winning for the first time was special for her. It was very emotional and the celebrations was just our emotions taking over,” said the 18-year-old at the Chennai Airport on Tuesday, after being felicitated by SDAT, Tamil Nadu State Chess Associaton and Velammal Group.”

According to Gukesh, putting Arjun on board three instead of board one and him on board one despite Arjun being the higher rated player, was basically the non-playing captain N. Srinath’s brainwave. “It was basically Srinath idea. The players all thought that it was the obvious strategy to go for. The reasons are clear. Arjun has more experience playing against slightly lower-rated opponents in open tournaments and is more skilful in outplaying them in both colours. Pragg (Praggnanandhaa) and I have more experience playing against the top players. In that sense, both Pragg (board 2) and I (board one) were quite solid. We knew that on board three, if Arjun was in good form he would crush the opponents,” said Gukesh.

Explaining the role of Srinath, Gukesh said: “Srinath’s role cannot be underestimated. He comes up with board order, taking care of all press conferences and making sure everyone was in good spirits. He made sure that the team got together,” said the World championship challenger.

On the FIDE world championship scheduled in November (Nov. 23 to Dec. 15) in Singapore against China’s Ding Liren, Gukesh sounded confident. “I can say that me and my team are doing some nice work, having fun together, which is important. We still have two months left,” he said.