Chess great Viswanathan Anand shared his experience of shooting an advertisement for the recently crowned World Champions Gukesh, which went viral. The two chess grandmasters of different generations came together in a frame for an advertisement.
Anand recently talked about it and said it was quite uncharacteristic of Gukesh how he delivered the punchline to the actor who played his manager in the advertisement.
“The bit where he tells his manager is quite uncharacteristic of Gukesh. He must have struggled a little bit,” Anand said in a video.
In December last year, the 18-year-old Gukesh became the youngest world champion ever by beating China’s Ding Liren. He is only the second Indian after the great Viswanathan Anand to achieve this feat.
He also received the prestigious Major Dhyan Chand Khel Ratna from President Droupadi Murmu in a glittering National Sports Awards ceremony.
Gukesh dethroned compatriot Arjun Erigiasi to become the highest-ranked Indian chess player, at fourth, in the latest FIDE rankings on Thursday.
The 18-year-old achieved the feat when he logged his second victory in the Tata Steel Tournament in Wijk Aan Zee (Netherlands) defeating Vincent Keymer of Germany. He has amassed 2784 rating points, while Erigaisi, who was the highest-ranked Indian for a long time, has slipped to fifth with 2779.5 rating points.
Grandmaster R Praggnanadhaa played out a solid draw with World champion D Gukesh in the eighth round of the Tata Steel Masters here.
Playing the white side of a Berlin defense, Praggnanadhaa had slightly favourable position optically but Gukesh was always on guard to defend. It was in the early middle game that Gukesh sacrificed a pawn to get his counterplay rolling and even though Praggnanadhaa tried to make use of it, the game was always closer to a draw.
As the Queens got traded the players arrived at a rook and minor piece endgame wherein Gukesh found the best resources and even got an outside passed pawn. With Praggnanadhaa’s rook having the lone task of working against the pawn, the result of the game was never in doubt. The game was drawn after 33 moves.
