Bengaluru: Reigning world champion D Gukesh looked away from the board with a fist pump at the end of his round five rapid game in Warsaw. Seated across from him, Javokhir Sindarov put the pieces back on the board, possibly annoyed with himself. On Wednesday, with the Black pieces, Gukesh won their much-anticipated face-off in the Grand Chess Tour Super Rapid and Blitz.
It was their first meeting since Sindarov qualified as the World Championship challenger with a sweeping win in the Candidates tournament last month. They will play each other in the title match later this year. With an average age of twenty, it will be the youngest World Championship.
Gukesh has been battling form concerns for a while now, and juxtaposed with Uzbek Sindarov’s spectacular Candidates showing, he was quickly labelled the underdog in their World Championship match-up. The win in Poland was Gukesh possibly saying “Hold your horses fellas”.
Both Sindarov and Gukesh arrived at the board fresh from defeats in round four. Gukesh had lost to his 2024 World Championship second, Radoslaw Wojtaszek, while Sindarov had gone down against Wesley So. Playing with the White pieces, Sindarov went for a positional sacrifice (20. Nxe4) which the engines disapproved of rightaway.
Gukesh was up a piece with no compensation in sight for his Uzbek opponent. Following up his sacrifice by pushing his pawn to f6 may have helped, instead Sindarov allowed Black’s queen to sit comfortably on f6, defending all the key squares. Both players were soon down to seconds on the clock, with Sindarov twirling a captured black piece anxiously between his fingers, while Gukesh leaned over the board, surveying his winning position. He held his nerve under time pressure, laid siege to White’s king, forced a resignation and flashed a fist pump—a rare celebratory gesture from Gukesh.
{{/usCountry}}Gukesh was up a piece with no compensation in sight for his Uzbek opponent. Following up his sacrifice by pushing his pawn to f6 may have helped, instead Sindarov allowed Black’s queen to sit comfortably on f6, defending all the key squares. Both players were soon down to seconds on the clock, with Sindarov twirling a captured black piece anxiously between his fingers, while Gukesh leaned over the board, surveying his winning position. He held his nerve under time pressure, laid siege to White’s king, forced a resignation and flashed a fist pump—a rare celebratory gesture from Gukesh.
{{/usCountry}}“It (fist bump) was for myself,” Gukesh said in the post-game interview. “In the heat of the moment I just did something. It felt really good since it was a tense game and I was playing with seconds on the clock for a long time. Obviously when you play games like this, there’s something running behind it. During the game I was just trying to focus on playing the game. I know from my experience when I played Ding Liren before the 2024 match, there was always something going on. It’s a nice feeling.”
Gukesh drew his final game of the day against tournament leader Wesley So and now has two wins and six points from as many rounds.
During the course of the Candidates, Sindarov replaced Gukesh as a full-tour participant in the 2026 GCT, after the Indian decided to trim his playing commitments and opt for a lighter tournament schedule with the World Championship in mind.
In a psychological duel like the World Championship, every encounter between the two players that leads up to it is a chance for them to probe each other’s mind and get into each other’s head. Gukesh should be pleased with what he has got out of the first meeting with his challenger.