All posts tagged: Chess Psychology

‘Meeting expectations of ex-world champions is not Gukesh’s main goal’

‘Meeting expectations of ex-world champions is not Gukesh’s main goal’

Published by Webster

4 min readOsloJun 2, 2026 11:32 PM IST In the past 18 months, the crown of world champion seems to be weighing heavy on D Gukesh’s head. There seems to be a constant target on the back of the youngest champion in history. The results have sagged, winning chances squandered. Consequently, the cacophony of criticism has been deafening. Former world champions like Garry Kasparov, Magnus Carlsen, Vladimir Kramnik and Anatoly Karpov have offered unsparing comments about the boy who’s just turned 20. If one wondered how all that has affected the young man, his coach is not too perturbed. “I don’t think meeting the expectations of former world champions is his main goal as a professional chess player,” says Grzegorz Gajewski, the man who has been a constant corner man for Gukesh since 2023. “I don’t think the comments affected him at all. They have the right to their opinions. It’s your responsibility as a professional chess player, especially of his calibre, to simply focus on your job.” Since coming together in 2023, Gukesh and …

Why people go crazy at the Candidates tournament

Why people go crazy at the Candidates tournament

Published by Webster

It was a smile from a member of the audience which hoodwinked Hikaru Nakamura into making an embarrassing blunder. The year was 2016, and in the second round of the Candidates, Nakamura, the great American hope, was facing off against the Russian Sergey Karjakin. In the middlegame, Nakamura, trying to give his eyes a rest from staring at the board, cast his glance into the audience, where his eyes fell on the then FIDE president Kirsan Ilyumzhinov and an aide. Both held smiles on their faces. It got Nakamura thinking. “This sounds fairly embarrassing to say, but when I saw that they were smiling, for whatever reason, it made me miscalculate. I had seen a tactical idea on the board and when I saw them smiling, somehow I put two and two together. I thought that because they were smiling, there was some sort of trick in the position. It sounds really ridiculous as a professional chess player to let something like that get into your mind. I blundered, made a very basic miscalculation in …

Magnus Carlsen claims 21st world championship title after pulling rabbit out of hat in game 3 of final vs Fabiano Caruana | Chess News

Magnus Carlsen claims 21st world championship title after pulling rabbit out of hat in game 3 of final vs Fabiano Caruana | Chess News

Published by Webster

On a dramatic day in the seaside German town of Weissenhaus, Magnus Carlsen won the FIDE Freestyle Chess World Championship—his 21st World Championship title—after defeating Fabiano Caruana in a four-game finale late on Sunday. Carlsen has five classical World Championships besides six World Rapid Championships and nine World Blitz Championships. Now Carlsen adds a world title in the one format that was missing. “It’s certainly not one of my most convincing wins today,” Carlsen told the YouTube channel of Freestyle Chess after winning the title. “… but it feels great to win on a bit of an off-day. I’m a little disappointed that I couldn’t bring the level that I showed yesterday. It feels great to win but I can do even better.” Caruana, chasing his first ever World Championship crown in any format, had winning positions in three of the four rapid games in the final against Carlsen, but could convert none. The third game between the pair was particularly chastening for the American grandmaster. For, it was there that he held a winning …

FIDE World Chess Championship: About glances at the opponent and pre-game rituals | Chess News

FIDE World Chess Championship: About glances at the opponent and pre-game rituals | Chess News

Published by Webster

As the tension mounted on him in Game 7, Ding Liren sneaked a couple of glances at D Gukesh as he contemplated his next move. The 18-year-old in front of the world champion has not noticed Ding’s furtive looks. He is in a meditative trance with his eyes shut. It’s become something of a tic for the boy from Chennai on the board. Each time he finds himself on the board with his opponent’s clock running, he tends to shut his eyes and calculate. “I’m in a room where there’s nothing else to see. So I close my eyes,” Gukesh had said after the previous game. “I close my eyes quite often during games. Sometimes, it is just that it’s easier to calculate with your eyes closed. So mostly just thinking about the position.” A couple of games back, the FIDE broadcast started calculating how much time Gukesh spends with his eyes shut on the board and how much time the players are spending away from their playing chairs. Grandmaster David Howell, a regular in …