The FIDE Candidates Recap: Gukesh’s Triumph

History was made in the world of chess on April 21 as 17-year old Dommaraju Gukesh of India won the Candidates Tournament that decides the challenger for the World Championship title. His victory makes him the youngest winner of the Candidates Tournament and the youngest world championship challenger ever. Gukesh will now challenge current World Champion Ding Liren for the title later this year. In the Women’s section, Chinese Grandmaster Tan Zhongyi will challenge her compatriot Ju Wenjun for the title in 2025.

The Candidates Tournament, a 14-game double round robin tournament, is held every two years under the auspices of the Fédération Internationale des Échecs (FIDE), the game’s global governing body. The 2024 Candidates is historic since it is the first time that the Men’s and Women’s sections have been held concurrently. This year’s edition took place in Toronto, marking the first time that the prestigious event has been held in the Americas. However, it almost didn’t happen there. A delay in the visa processing for the players forced FIDE to reconsider moving the event to Spain. Luckily, an official letter from FIDE to the Canadian government ensured that such a measure would not be necessary. This was not the event’s only controversy, however. A peculiar incident occurred in the ninth round, when the presiding arbiter allegedly told Iranian-French Grandmaster Alireza Firouzja to stop walking around because his shoes were making a lot of noise. Firouzja, who went on to draw a winning game against tournament co-leader Ian Nepomniachtchi, took to Twitter to express his displeasure: “Shameful action by the chief arbiter Marghetis towards me during the game. Middle of the game in the most intense moment when I was walking during Ian’s move, chief arbiter came to me and told me not to walk anymore because my shoe is making noise on the wooden floor…This was a big distraction for me and I completely lost my focus.”

As the tournament reached its conclusion, however, the focus began to turn to chess. Although Tan led the Women’s tournament from start to finish, by Round 13 there were still four contenders in the Men’s section: Gukesh; streamer, content creator, and grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura; Russian No.1 Nepomniachtchi; and the soft-spoken yet incredibly strong Fabiano Caruana. While Nakamura and Nepomniachtchi drew their game, Gukesh won his game against Firouzja and Caruana won against another Indian prodigy, Praggnanandhaa. This left Gukesh just half a point ahead of the field going into the final round. In a strange coincidence, all the contenders were paired with each other for the final game, with Nakamura taking the white pieces in a must-win game against Gukesh while Caruana and Nepomniachtchi squared off in a game where both needed to win to have a hope of first place. Over the course of the round, Nakamura’s vast fanbase were left disappointed as 17-year old Gukesh displayed nerves of steel to draw the game, thus putting Nakamura out of contention. Meanwhile, Caruana was winning a tense struggle against Nepomniachtchi, which led even the commentators to believe that he would catch up to Gukesh and force a tiebreak. As the time on their clocks dwindled, Caruana was unable to find the win and ended up drawing the game. Knowing that they had ruined each other’s chances of winning the tournament, Caruana and Nepomniachtchi continued to sit at the board with forlorn expressions. Nepomniachtchi broke the silence by apologizing, to which Caruana could only respond: “My fault.”

Meanwhile, an entire nation was rejoicing in Gukesh’s victory, as India had its first World Championship challenger since the legendary Viswanathan Anand. Gukesh’s triumph shows that success is getting ever younger, with child prodigies taking every sport by storm. Will the old guard be able to combat this genius generation? World Champion Ding Liren seems to think so.