Pressure builds on world champion Gukesh as he slips out of top-10

An indifferent run of world champion D. Gukesh in the Grand Swiss chess tournament, which saw him succumbing to three defeats on the trot and then a 102-move draw against compatriot Divya Deshmukh is making headlines as he has slipped out of top-10 in FIDE live rankings.

 The past week had been a nightmarish one for Gukesh, now sitting in 12^th position with 2748.2 rating points his shocking defeat to 16-year-old Abhimanyu Mishra in the second round rubbing salt into the wounds. His other defeats were against Turkiye’s Ediz Gurel and Nikolas Theodorou (Elo rating 2646) of Greece – while the draw against Divya will  have his think tank wondering of a way to get out of the rut.

 Top flight chess players are no strangers to such blips, but the pressure is immense on the 19-year-old whose world title last year has often been questioned by the chess elite. The 2025 season had been a topsy-turvy one for the Chennai youngster who began it with a second place finish to R. Praggnanandha at the Tata Steel Chess Masters before he hit inconsistent form. In the second leg of the Grand Chess Tour 2025 in Romania, Gukesh finished sixth while his best finish since then had been a third place finish at Norway Chess.

It's not that Gukesh didn’t have his moments at all – the most notable of them being beating Magnus Carlsen for the first time in classical chess at his backyard and following it up with another win against the genius in blitz category in Zagreb. However, his body language in Samarkand – venue of the Grand Swiss – has been betraying a great deal of anxiety on his part.

 Carlsen, the five-time world champion who had pulled out of the World Championship cycle, had been quite uncharitable about Gukesh and joining the chorus was the legendary Garri Kasparov. The Russian said in August: “Gukesh won fair and square but you can hardly call him the strongest player in the world. I don’t want to sound offensive but I think Magnus ended the era of classical world champions. Gukesh’s world championship title is very different.

 ‘’It’s still clear that Magnus is the strongest and Gukesh is yet to prove his superiority over others. Even players of his age category. The round 1 game against Praggnanandhaa at the Sinquefield Cup was very unimpressive. The rules are the rules and the games are the games,” he said.

 The onus is now on D. Gukesh to come back stronger – and he can take a cue from friend Pragg about bouncing back from a lean run.