Chess legend echoes Magnus Carlsen’s views on D Gukesh’s World Chess Championship win: ‘Not what we want to see…’

D Gukesh recently made history by becoming the youngest ever World Chess Champion. The 18-year-old achieved the milestone by defeating reigning champion Ding Liren in the final of the tournament in Singapore.

While social media and many chess legends praised the youngster’s landmark achievement, Gukesh also saw some negative reactions from a section of former players, including chess great Magnus Carlsen. The Norwegian had said that classical chess was perhaps the “worst way” to measure a player, adding that rapid chess was perhaps a more “pure” form of chess.

The Norwegian also said that Gukesh’s World Chess Championship final against China’s Ding Liren looked like a second or third round match in an open tournament.

Carlsen’s views have now also been supported by Armenian-American Chess Grandmaster Levon Aronian. Speaking on a podcast on Take Take app, Aronian said, “So, basically, if we train a guy like this, he’ll be able in 80 per cent of the time to make a draw against top 10 players. That’s not what we want to see as chess fans. I don’t want to see the weaker player completely neutralising the stronger player,”

Aronian also compared Chess with other sports like boxing and MMA. He said, “There are certain sports that went into that and then suddenly the sport became just too boring. I know a bit about wrestling. In Greco-Roman wrestling, when you change the rules, you make them concentrate on getting the points, it becomes much less of a sport like boxing. Why is MMA so much more exciting? Because, it’s basically freestyle chess and regular boxing is like classical boxing that can turn into a very boring, technical game,”

Gukesh on Magnus Carlsen’s comments:

Following his win over Liren, Gukesh was asked if Carlsen’s comments hurt him. The Indian grand master replied, “I get that maybe in some of the games, the quality was not high but I think the world championship matches are decided not purely by chess but by who has the better character and who has the better willpower. And I think those qualities, I did show quite well.”

Gukesh also noted that he would have liked to compete at a better level. “And the pure chess part, it was not at a very high level as I would have liked it to be because it’s a new experience for me. So the workload was different, the pressure was different.”