 "D Gukesh's miserable run in Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour continues with defeat against Fabiano Caruana")
Gukesh Dommaraju’s underwhelming run in the Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour continued as the reigning world champion suffered his second successive defeat in Weissenhaus on Sunday. Gukesh’s latest setback came against Italian-American Grandmaster Fabiano Caruana during the first of two games in the quarter-finals, in which the 18-year-old Indian resigned in 40 moves to hand his opponent a 1-0 lead.
Caruana, who was the joint-leader at the end of the opening day before slipping to third on Saturday, has one foot in the semi-finals as a result of his victory while Gukesh was left staring at the bleak prospect of going through an entire tournament without a single win, something that would rarely be associated with a player of his stature.
As It Happened | Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour 2025, Day 3
Gukesh had walked away with a draw against ‘Fabi’ in his first game on Saturday, putting up a spirited fight even after committing a blunder in his 34th move which resulted in both players shaking hands after 61 moves. The draw against Caruana was followed by a similar result against Vladimir Fedoseev, before he lost his final game of the day against Magnus Carlsen in his first face-off against the world No 1 since being crowned world champion.
Game 1 between Gukesh and Caruana was in the balance for the better part of the game after the latter chose to lock horns with the world champion while playing with black pieces. The Stockfish engine even leaned heavily in favour of Gukesh at one point when he was making a series of good decisions around the halfway stage.
As was the case in the defeat against Carlsen on Saturday, it was a blunder that turned the tide in his opponent’s favour. Only this time the Chennai lad committed the error in his 25th move by initiating a queen exchange along c4. Caruana was quick to offer a check with his rook five moves later, and from thereon there was no looking back for the 32-year-old.
Impact Shorts
More ShortsFabiano Caruana finishes in superb style, takes down the World Champion D Gukesh in Game 1 of the Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Quarterfinals! pic.twitter.com/qlnAssS8hP
— ChessBase India (@ChessbaseIndia) February 9, 2025
In the other quarter-final meetings at the Weissenhaus Private Nature Luxury Resort in northern Germany, Magnus Carlsen continued his fine form by handing Nodirbek Abdusattorov a defeat in 27 moves. Meanwhile, local favourite Vincent Keymer pulled off something of an upset by defeating Alireza Firouzja, who had finished on top of the Round-Robin standings, with black pieces.
The only game on Day 3 that ended in a stalemate was the one between Javokhir Sindarov and Hikaru Nakamura.
Though Caruana has one foot in the semis, Gukesh will get another chance to fight back on Monday in Game 2 of the quarter-finals in which the colours will be reversed. Should Gukesh end his winless run in Weissenhaus and make it 1-1, the quarter-final will be decided in a series of tie-breaks that will be played with shorter time controls.
Should the two players remain on level terms even after the tie-breaks, the winner of the quarter-final will be decided via an Armageddon face-off.
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