Prague Chess Festival: D Gukesh faces first defeat; Aravindh draws
Gukesh bowed down to Jorden van Foreest of the Netherlands in the third round.
Gukesh Dommaraju. (Photo credit: Lennart Ootes/Freestyle Chess)
The reigning world champion Gukesh Dommaraju faced his first defeat in the third round of the 2026 Prague Chess Festival in Czechia on Friday.
Gukesh, playing with the black pieces, bowed down to Jorden van Foreest of the Netherlands in 48 moves after multiple inaccuracies in the endgame.
With this, he also dropped down to the rankings with just 1 point from three games and is now tied 7th with Vinecent Keymer (GER), Hans Niemann (USA) and Parham Maghsoodloo (Iran).
A quick draw for Aravindh Chithambaram
Meanwhile, the other Indian in contention, defending champion GM Aravindh Chithamabaram, played out a quick draw with Parham in his round-3 game.
Both players evened each other out with high accuracy in a Caro-Kann game to play out a draw after just 30 moves with three-fold repetition.
Aravindh is now joint 5th with 1.5 points from three games and just half a point behind the four leaders.
In the fourth round on Saturday, he will take on Vincent Keymer, while Gukesh will be up against the home favourite and current joint leader, David Navara.
In the Challengers section, Grandmaster Divya Deshmukh and GM Surya Sekhar Ganguly both suffered defeats in their third-round matches.
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