After 92 moves, Gukesh had managed to draw water out of stone to earn a draw. Both players will play the second game tomorrow, with Gukesh having white pieces. (FIDE/Lennart Ootes)
The playing hall burst into applause. Even Gukesh Dommaraju broke into a rare smile after shaking hands with his opponent Alireza Firouzja on Thursday in the first game of their classification match for 7th spot at the Weissenhaus leg of the Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour.
Gukesh had not managed to beat Alireza, but it was a draw that was as good as a win for a player who is still winless at the luxury resort village in Germany. The applause was for the way Gukesh had managed to salvage a draw from a completely losing position.
It was one of those games where the eval bar favoured Alireza from the start: in fact, the bar tipped over in the Frenchman’s favour after the first moves from both players. This was because Gukesh, playing with black pieces, had opted to hop the wrong knight.
INTERACTIVE: How Gukesh evaded Alireza Firouzja to force a draw
At one point in the game, the evaluation bar was down on the floor indicating a definite win for Alireza. At that point, the Iran-born French grandmaster had over 17 minutes left on his clock while the world champion from Chennai had 47 seconds.
Gukesh was on the defensive from very early on in the game against Alireza. But the critical turning point came when Alireza opted to exchange rooks when he was a pawn up. After 92 moves, Gukesh had managed to draw water out of stone to earn a draw. Both players will play the second game tomorrow, with Gukesh having white pieces.
In the final, German grandmaster Vincent Keymer, who had helped Gukesh become the world champion, had defeated Fabiano Caruana. Meanwhile, in the battle for third spot, Magnus Carlsen beat young Uzbek star Javokhir Sindarov. The battle for 5th place, saw Hikaru Nakamura beat Nodirbek Abdusattorov.
