Picture Credit: X
Indian Grandmaster Dommaraju Gukesh, who is the current world chess champion, gave an exclusive interview ahead of the highly anticipated Norway Chess 2025 tournament, set to be played in Stavanger. The 18-year-old spoke at length about his epic rise in the world of chess recently before talking about how is looking forward to having an interesting game with Norwegian world number one Magnus Carlsen from Norway, which he also expects to be a fun challenge.
The start of the Norway Chess 2025 will be happen on Monday, May 26, and it will continue till June 6, wherein the likes of Magnus Carlsen and Dommaraju Gukesh will be taking on the likes of Hikaru Nakamura, Arjuna Erigaisi, Fabiano Caruana, and Wei Yi, among others. After becoming world chess champion last year, Gukesh has had an indifferent time in the sport, from coming close to winning the Tata Steel Chess tournament before not winning a single game in the Freestyle Chess Weissenhaus and Paris legs.
It’s great to see the world champion face the number one player in the world for the spectators: Dommaraju Gukesh
In his exclusive interview with Norway Chess, Dommaraju Gukesh gave an in-depth and honest assessment of his recent performances in chess. He was quoted as saying, “Last year (2024) in classical chess, I played tournaments where I kind of proved whatever needed to be proved. And right now the focus is not about proving it. The world championship is not where I want to stop, I want to go beyond that. So it’s not about proving, but improving myself and going beyond where I am.”
After that, Gukesh gave his first take on the upcoming match with Carlsen, which will be their first after he took the latter’s spot as the new world chess champion last December. He remarked, “It will be a very interesting game and a fun challenge. In 2024 we didn’t face off in classical at all. For the spectators, it’s great to see the world champion face the number one player in the world. It’s something that sounds exciting. It’s surely something I’m very happy to give myself and to chess fans. I hope it will be a treat.”
