Picture Credit: X
Indian Grandmaster (GM) Dommaraju Gukesh, who is the reigning world chess champion, recently participated in the Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour 2025 Paris event. Before the start of the tournament, Botez Sisters, who have played a key role in taking chess to new heights in recent years, shared a picture on Alexandra’s official X account with Dommaraju Gukesh, in which the latter was standing quite awkwardly, which brought negative comments their way, and in response, a few days later, they shared a new pic in which the Indian GM was smiling to quieten the critics.
The viral picture was posted on April 6 by Alexandra Botez on X wherein she and her youngster sister Andrea Botez stood side-by-side with Dommaraju Gukesh, holding a morphed photo of him, which was also autographed. Gukesh was looking quite stiff in the picture, and to further add to the sturdy nature of the Indian GM, they shared the close-up of his face in the same post, captioning it “Gukesh so happy to see us as always :)”.
People getting really upset in the comments so here is happy Gukesh: Alexandra Botez
As the post caught the attention of the Indian chess community, they were quick to throw shade at Botez Sisters for intentionally trying to highlight the quiet nature of Dommaraju Gukesh into something which it isn’t. After more than four days, Botez Sisters acknowledged the reaction to their initial post, and Alexandra Botez sent out a new one from her official X account in which Gukesh was smiling, captioning it, “People getting really upset in the comments so here is happy Gukesh”.
Moreover, in the Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour 2025 Paris event, Dommaraju Gukesh didn’t perform anywhere close to his best, finishing the round-robin stage without qualifying through to the quarter-finals in a 12-player field. In the battle for 9-12 places, he lost to French GM Richard Rapport, to finish alongside compatriot Vidit Gujarathi in shared 11th place in the tournament.
