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World Chess Champion Dommaraju Gukesh battled against fellow Indian grandmaster Divya Deshmukh in the round 8 of the FIDE Grand Swiss event, which ended in a draw after a gruelling battle lasting around six hours and more than 100 moves. While the classical match between two of the teenage chess sensations ended in a stalemate, there is a video featuring both going viral on social media from their childhood days.
Just seven years ago, back in 2018, when Divya Deshmukh and Dommaraju Gukesh were about 13 years of age, a clip of their innocent and naive interaction from that time resurfaced on the internet. As per Times of India, Divya asked Gukesh in the clip, “How much Hindi do you know?” In response, the reigning champion had a nonchalant reply, saying “Zero”, to which her first reaction was to roll her eyes in sheer disbelief.
Watch the video here:
Divya Deshmukh held Dommaraju Gukesh to a draw at FIDE Grand Swiss
In the same report, it was also stated that Divya Deshmukh brushed her impulsive response to Dommaraju Gukesh aside before becoming her translator, giving the hands on Hindi translation of his English analysis of the moves to the audience tuning into the Hindi channel of the chess platform online. But during their highly anticipated match just recently, both the grandmasters were completely focused on getting the job done on the board without giving an inch to one another.
Following the end of the drawn match, Dommaraju Gukesh slipped out of the top 10 FIDE Rankings in classical chess, finding himself in 12th place with just 2748.2 points in the live standings. Moreover, after the conclusion of eight rounds of the FIDE Grand Swiss, Divya Deshmukh, who has four points to her name, finds herself ahead of Dommaraju Gukesh with 3.5 points on the leaderboard.
