Chess
170 games in 365 days: Gukesh Dommaraju's first year as World Champion
A year after the historic win, The Bridge analyses the youngest-ever chess champion's rise and struggles.
D Gukesh (Photo credit: Eng Chin An/FIDE)
12 December, 2026 marks exactly a year since GM Ding Liren played the fateful Rf2 move. Having spotted the mistake almost immediately, Gukesh Dommaraju went on a two-minute thinking mode, gulping down half-a-bottle of water in the process in complete disbelief.
In the end after calculating and re-calculating multiple times, Gukesh played the winning move continuation. Ding resigned. At 18, Gukesh became the world’s youngest-ever chess champion.
He brought back the title Viswanathan Anand conceded to Magnus Carlsen after more than a decade to India.
In the 365 days since, Gukesh has grown into one of the most recognisable faces in Indian sports. His brand value shot up, starred in viral advertisements, pocketed govt accolades including the Major Dhyan Chand Khel Ratna — becoming the youngest to be awarded with India’s highest sport honour.
Along with the success also came immense scrutiny. In the global chess world, each of his moves over the board is overly analysed; the legitimacy of his world championship win often questioned. But through all of it Gukesh’s humility and acceptance that he still has a long way to go to become a force as dominant as Carlsen.
In the year since he was crowned the world champion, the teenager has played 170 matches across formats. This includes events like Freestyle Chess, FIDE Grand Swiss, FIDE World Cup, and even a uniquely formatted Checkmate: India v/s USA.
In those 170 matches, Gukesh has struggled more often than not. He has won 42 of those, lost 61, and drawn the remaining 67. His win rate during this period stands at a poor 24.70% — certainly way lower than what the chess world expects of a world champion.
In Gukesh’s defence, he has played only 61 out of those 170 matches in the standard classical format in which he clinched the title.
He has recorded 19 wins, lost 11, and drawn 30 games in those 61 classical matches, with a draw rate of 49.18% and win rate of 31.14%. These are not bad numbers to boast of in the format known for uneventful draws, especially when you’ve recorded wins against the likes of Carlsen, Fabiano Caruana, Hikaru Nakamura, Levon Aronian, Anish Giri, and Arjun Erigaisi — some of the most well-rounded players in the circuit.
What has gone against Gukesh, though, has been his tendency to lose matches against lower rated opponents as evidenced by his second round exit at the 2025 FIDE World Cup in Goa against Fredrick Svane or his three consecutive losses at the 2025 FIDE Grand Swiss to Abhimanyu Mishra, Nikolas Theodoru, and Ediz Gurel.
At the Tata Steel Chess in Wijk aan Zee – his first tournament since the world championship – Gukesh conceded a match with the white pieces against compatriot Erigaisi when he just required a draw to seal the title. He eventually finished runner-up after losing to Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu in the tie-breaks.
With a rating of 2692 and 2628 in rapid and blitz respectively, compared to 2754 in classical, the shorter formats were always looked upon as Gukesh’s weakness. Despite winning the rapid section at Superunited Croatia earlier in the year, the assessment remains the same.
In the rapid time control at the Clutch Chess, Superunited Croatia, St Louis, and Checkmate, Gukesh played a total of 37 matches, winning 11 while losing and drawing 13 apiece over the last year.
In the even shorter blitz matches, Gukesh’s woes further compounded with just seven wins in 36 matches. Among the rest, he lost 17 and shared points in 12.
The shorter time controls are facets of the game, Gukesh is still improving.
"We are trying to improve in all possible formats. This is not a shift; it’s just catching up," his coach and trainer Grzegorz Gajewski was quoted as saying by The Indian Express.
"The ability to play when low on time is part of the classical game as well. So by improving his rapid and blitz skills, I believe we can also improve the classical as well," he added.
However, Gukesh’s biggest challenge remained the fast-growing freestyle chess. In the 30 matches he played in the format across time control, he managed to win just 3 matches — a dismal win rate of 10%. He also lost 14 and drew 13 of those matches.
"I found it very hard to calculate and evaluate here because there is much more to calculate here (freestyle) than in standard chess," Gukesh had admitted following his disappointing run at the Paris leg of Freestyle Grand Slam.
"In standard chess, you see three or four options you know are good and you calculate. Here you just don’t know which ones are the good moves. Maybe the players who have this kind of feeling for where the pieces belong like Magnus or Vincent… not everybody has that,” he added.
GM Srinath Narayanan, the Indian national coach and someone who has seen Gukesh’s rise from a pre-teen prodigy to world champion, feels that it’s normal for a 19-year-old who is still developing to have underwhelming results.
"It could be that the pressure of being world champion, the pressure of expectations could potentially be taking a toll on how he enjoys and plays chess," Srinath told The Bridge.
"Aside from that for a 19-year-old boy, it's very normal to have ups and downs in his career during the stage of development.
"It just so happens that he is a world champion, so there is a higher level of scrutiny on each and every performance of his," he added.
Gukesh’s next big challenge will be the World Rapid and Blitz C’ships later this year. It’s the formats he has struggled in, the tournament he had skipped last year after winning the world championship.
Can he deliver? Only time will tell.
