The man is confused, desperate; the boy is very calm. The man looks up from the chessboard again and again, then at the boy across from him, breathing deeply, shaking his head. The game time on the clock shows 2:20 minutes for the man, 2:15, 2:10. Now the narrow, little boy gets up, looks around in the big hall of the Schwarzwaldhalle in Karlsruhe, then relaxed again on the board. He looks like one of the spectators, watching the game with his head slightly tilted. Interested, but emotionless.
Two minutes. The man, Marin Boriosic, grandmaster from Croatia and before this last game of the ninth round of the Grenke Chess Open with chances for the overall victory, already suspects in this moment that he has lost. Because the boy has given him an unsolvable task. Boriosic either takes the opponent's black tower and converts a pawn into a queen. Or he chooses the pawn and loses a knight. Both will cost him the lot.
The second youngest grandmaster in history
Later, the boy will say that he started the game terribly and then won. It is a very factual, self-critical, somehow adult analysis for a twelve-year-old. But maybe the impression is just a consequence of the perspective. Although Gukesh Dommaraju from Chennai in India may still be physically a child, he has long played chess as an adult: since January he is the second youngest grandmaster in the long history of chess. Only Sergei Karjakin, 2016 World Championship challenger to Magnus Carlsen, fulfilled the standard one month earlier.
George Souleidis
Gukesh in Karlsruhe
The story of Gukesh is an Indian chess wonder, about a boy who has been traveling the world from tournament to tournament for more than a year. Always at his side: his father Rajini kanth, 40, short gray hair and the stature of an elite soldier. Rajini is a doctor by profession, but now a vocation travel companion of his only son. His wife Padma, Gukesh's mother, is also a doctor, she works in India and takes care of the organization of the family, so everything. Husband and son see her for a maximum of one week a month. That too is part of this story - the hardships needed to make it up in the chess world.
In 2013, half a lifetime ago, Gukesh is still a normal student. Chess? "I played for fun with my parents," he says. At school he learns to love the game, plays at camp sometime, but without much progress. Even today, the twelve-year-old can remember well the turning point. "It was 2014. Until this youth tournament, I had some real problems, I just did not get any better, I improved by 200 points in the tournament, and before that, I did not have confidence, then a lot."
"His mother suffers a lot"
With the leaps in performance in the years on it, the challenges for the small family grow. The son, who is particularly fascinated by the complexity of chess, is playing more and more tournaments and is being released from school. But to get ahead, talent must leave home. "From 2016, he made so much progress that many said he needed to go to Europe to play for the championship standards," says Father Rajini. "So I gave up my practice to be there for Gukesh."
Mum can not take off, she is employed - and suddenly she is the sole breadwinner who not only works, but also pays the highest price. "She suffers a lot because she rarely sees her son," Rajini says, and as he says, it's probably an understatement. And Gukesh? "I do not miss them during the tournaments," he says softly, smiling. His father looks complacent. "He would never admit it, but of course he misses her too."
Recently, Gukesh has seen his mother even less often. The Grenke Chess Open, which is open to everyone and whose winner qualifies for the Grenke Chess Classic the following year, is "the fifth or sixth tournament in the past two months," says Father Rajini. The many trips cost a lot of money, now Team Gukesh is supported by a small sponsor, also the Indian Chess Federation participates, since Gukesh is Grandmaster. That was not always so. "It takes a great deal of attention and success to get support from the association in India, but it should be the other way around," says Rajini.
"It all comes from himself"
If you ask Gukesh about his greatest strength, the boy refers to his trainer. "He says I have a special sense of strategy."
When asked about the greatest strength of his son, Rajini sounds admiring and terrified at the same time. "He's extremely focused, and his success is hard work, not a huge talent." One does not have to constantly explain to the son that he should not waste his time, "it all comes from him. We are the ones who force him to eat or to sleep." Gukesh always forgets that. " His own parents always had to drive him to work hard, says the father. "We did not have to remind Gukesh once."
Although Gukesh will not be first in Karlsruhe, he is tied to the winner in fourth place. In all nine games he remains without defeat.