How India’s Gukesh Dommaraju became chess king in a cricket crazy country

Gukesh, a teenager from Chennai, is the youngest chess world champion. Here’s how he got there.

Indian chess prodigy Gukesh Dommaraju has become the youngest world chess champion ever after defeating defending champion Ding Liren of China.

Gukesh’s win on Thursday came in the last game of the 14-game World Chess Championship in Singapore. The otherwise cricket-crazed India is jubilant at the 18-year-old’s victory.

Here is more about Gukesh, and how he clinched the world title:

Gukesh comes from Chennai, the capital of the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu. He attended Chennai’s Velammal Nexus School.

He started playing chess at the age of seven, Gukesh said in an interview uploaded in 2019 by the Gibraltar International Chess Festival.

“Chess is so complex, so I just love it,” Gukesh said in the video. “I want to become a world champion.”

By the age of 12, Gukesh had become a grandmaster – the highest title a chess player can attain – making him the third-youngest grandmaster in history and the youngest one from India.

Gukesh sees beauty and philosophy in pawns, bishops and boards. A YouTube video uploaded by the chess news publication ChessBase India shows the shelves of his room in his Chennai house stacked with trophies and chess books, such as Under the Surface by Jan Markos and Yochanan Afek’s Practical Chess Beauty.

Chennai has come to be known as the chess capital of India. Out of the 85 chess grandmasters in India, 31 are from Tamil Nadu. The state is even home to a temple dedicated to the game

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