'Like climbing Mount Everest:' Inside the gruelling world of the Chess World Championship
CTV
The Chess World Championship begins in Singapore on Monday with China's Ding Liren seeking to defend his title against India's Gukesh Dommaraju, better known as Gukesh D, who is still just 18 years old and could become the youngest ever person to be crowned world champion.
Ding Liren slumped over the board with fallen chess pieces scattered in front of him in the moments after he won the Chess World Championship last year.
His head bowed, his expression blank, he seemed as if he was collecting himself after a brutal fight, still reeling from the blows his opponent Ian Nepomniachtchi had landed, wary to move in case his legs gave out under him.
The pair had been dueling each other for three weeks, maintaining a mind-boggling level of concentration during that time, for any momentary lapse could cost them the game.
The Chess World Championship is an extraordinary, singular event. Its first edition was held 138 years ago but, in that time, just 17 players have become world champion. “Chess demands total concentration,” Bobby Fischer, the only American ever to hold the title, once noted, and only those capable of maintaining that focus for weeks on end can achieve the biggest prize in the sport.
“It’s our Mount Olympus,” Viswanathan “Vishy” Anand, a five-time world chess champion, tells CNN Sport. “It’s the thing you spend a lot of time trying to achieve, aiming for, dreaming of, since you learned the game. It’s like climbing Mount Everest or crossing the Amazon.”
On Monday, this year’s edition of the grueling tournament will begin in Singapore with China’s Ding seeking to defend his title against India’s Gukesh Dommaraju, better known as Gukesh D, who is still just 18 years old and could become the youngest ever person to be crowned world champion.
“You lose weight during a chess tournament of this intensity. The pressure is absolutely enormous,” Malcolm Pein, chess correspondent for English newspaper The Daily Telegraph, tells CNN Sport.
