Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour: Why Fabiano Caruana selected D Gukesh as his quarter-final opponent for Weissenhaus leg

American grandmaster Fabiano Caruana has explained his reason behind picking world champion Dommaraju Gukesh as his quarter-final opponent for the Weissenhaus leg of the 2025 Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour. Caruana said that he picked the 18-year-old because of his experience of playing “high-stakes games” that include his 2024 World Chess Championship match against Ding Liren in Singapore.

‘Gukesh has more experience of playing for World Championship’: Caruana

While Caruana qualified for the quarter-finals after finishing third with six points, Gukesh, who is yet to win a game in the tournament, finished in eighth place with 3.5 points . “Well, the thing is I have to pick someone, I could flip a coin, right? But they’re both super strong players, I mean, maybe Gukesh is around 2790, maybe Nodirbek Abdusattorov is around 2780,” Caruana said on the Take Take Take app after his win over Gukesh in the first game of the quarter-final tie.

“I don’t know, it’s not like there’s a huge qualitative difference. Of course, Gukesh has the more experience in terms of playing for the World Championship, that’s a wealth of experience and winning the World Championship. And he’s played more high stakes games compared to Nodirbek Abdusattorov," he added.

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“But Nodirbek Abdusattorov has advantages in terms of putting pressure on his opponent. Sometimes it doesn’t work out, like today I think playing a bit too fast and maybe not so carefully, but sometimes it’s very dangerous," continued Caruana.

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Fabiano Caruana explains why he picked @DGukesh as his opponent in the @chess_freestyle quarter finals. pic.twitter.com/JK50bY7qjV

— Take Take Take (@TakeTakeTakeApp) February 9, 2025

Caruana admitted that there was a toss-up between Gukesh and Nodirbek and said that if his choice was between the Uzbekistan GM and Hikaru Nakamura, he would have picked Nodirbek.

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“So it’s a bit of a toss-up, you know? I think for me Gukesh was a bit more of an unknown than Nodirbek Abdusattorov in some ways, like we have a lot of experience against each other, we played a match here last year, and I just decided before that if it’s between… I was sure that Nodirbek would still be there because I thought Sindarov will probably not pick his countryman.

“So I thought, okay, if it’s between Nodirbek and Hikaru, I’ll probably pick Nodirbek, between Gukesh and Nodirbek, or Gukesh and Hikaru, I’ll probably pick Gukesh in that case," elaborated the 32-year-old.

‘The win is great’: Caruana after beating Gukesh in Game 1 of quarter-finals

Caruana was quite pleased with his win over Gukesh on Sunday. Another win for the American in the second game of the quarter-finals on Monday will knock the Indian teenager out of the Weissenhaus leg.

“The win is great of course, especially in a game like that where anything could have happened, I could have definitely lost if things hadn’t gone my way,” commented Caruana.

“A draw and I would have been pretty reasonably satisfied with, although I was getting ambitious at some moment when I sacked his pawn with d5, queen b4, it was of course an ambitious idea.

“I wasn’t sure. I thought maybe I could play safer, but sometimes it feels like you should also take control of your own destiny," added the Florida-born chess player.