World champion D Gukesh will have his task cut out as he looks to stage a comeback against Fabiano Caruana of the USA in the Freestyle Grand Slam chess tournament in Hamburg, Germany. Gukesh suffered a rare setback in normal time control on Sunday, losing to Caruana in the first game of the quarterfinals. The Indian is now under pressure to perform with his black pieces and draw level with Caruana who has been dreaming to be a world champion for a few years now.
The freestyle chess is built around 960 random positions shifting the initial position of the pieces from the base rank while the pawns remain intact.
The legendary Bobby Fischer was the first to advocate freestyle chess, and given the support the new format has received, it could well be the future of the sport.
Gukesh will have to fight hard, as his opening choices have come under scrutiny already while a whole new repertoire needs to be built. Caruana was almost staring at a defeat in the opening game of the quarters but will be looking at the return game with a lot of enthusiasm.
In the first game of the quarters, Gukesh was at the top of his game for the major part, improvising when it was necessary but the Indian failed to find a queen sacrifice in the latter stages of the middle game, and that cost him dearly.
As it happened in the game, Caruana was quick to take charge of the situation and did not give anything back.
Meanwhile, Magnus Carlsen, the main protagonist behind the tour, continued from where he left and scored a fine win over Nodirbek Abdusattorov of Uzbekistan.
Alireza Firouzja of France lost to Vincent Keymer of Germany in the opener, and the irony is that the latter was chosen to be his first round opponent by the winner of the qualifier event.
In the other game of the quarters, Javokhir Sindarov of Uzbekistan played out a draw with Hikaru Nakamura while in the inconsequential ninth place decider, American Levon Aronian finally won his first game at the expense of Vladimir Fedoseev of Slovenia.
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