Our Bureau
Zagreb
India’s reigning world champion D Gukesh has once again defeated chess maestro Magnus Carlsen in the sixth round of Grand Chess Tour SuperUnited Rapid 2025 in Zagreb, Croatia. Gukesh and Carlsen clashed this Thursday on Day 2 of the tournament and the Indian Grand Master triumphed over Carlsen who called him one of the weaker players in the tournament just before it started.
Gukesh now is on a five-game winning streak and currently is sitting at the top spot in the tournament. At the end of Day 1, he was sharing the top spot in the tournament and started the second day by defeating Uzbekistan’s Nodirbek Abdusattorov in the fourth round and then defeated American grandmaster Fabiano Caruana in the fifth round.
Then came the highly talked about match between Carlsen and Gukesh. Carlsen had already undermined Gukesh in an interview before the tournament started. He stated, “Gukesh hasn’t done anything to indicate that he’s going to do well in such a tournament.”
The Norwegian Grand Master stated that Gukesh hasn’t proven himself as one of the best in this format. He stated that he hopes for Gukesh’s sake he does well in the tournament but to him he will be one of the weaker players to match up against in this tournament.
“Gukesh actually played quite well here last time. But it remains to be proven that he’s one of the best players in such a format. This is a very, very strong field that we have here. Players like Gukesh and Anish Giri… they have a lot to prove because there aren’t a lot of players you can feast on. In the course of 27 rounds, things usually show. I hope for Gukesh’s sake that he can play better but playing him in this tournament I will sort of approach it as I’m playing one of the presumably weaker players in the tournament actually,” Carlsen said.
