World champion Dommaraju Gukesh's poor run in the Freestyle Chess Grand Tour continued with a game 1 loss to Fabiano Caruana in the quarter-finals. Gukesh had squeezed into the knockout rounds of the tournament in Weissenhaus with an eighth-placed finish yesterday, with Caruana picking him as his opponent. In a see-saw contest with the world no. 2, Gukesh lost out in the endgame with inaccurate play as he was in time trouble. The world champion has a shot to move the quarterfinal into tie-breakers should he win game 2 with black pieces tomorrow, but a draw will see him bow out and then contest for places 5-8 in the final points positions.
In keeping with Freestyle Chess's format, the quarterfinal began with all four games on the board starting with the same position - 381. It had knights on a1 & f1, rooks on b1 & e1, king on c1, bishops on d1 & g1 with the queen on h1. With an aim to securing their unprotected pawns, Gukesh and Caruana began with symmetrical three moves in the opening, with Gukesh the first to break the symmetry as his rook took the pawn at e4 in the 4th move. However, this allowed Caruana to move his bishop to the centre and opened the path for his queen. Curiously, the first five moves were the same as the game between Jakovhir Sindarov and Hikaru Nakamura, before a 20-minute think saw Gukesh deviate.
Gukesh came out of the opening with a slight advantage, before an inaccuracy in move 15 levelled things up again. The pair traded poor moves in the mid-game, as Caruana aimed at pressuring the pawns protecting Gukesh's king with a queen-and-knight combination. However, Gukesh played queen to f1 in his 23rd move that gave him a huge advantage, quite the surprise given it was a line not as obvious to the human brain as it was to the engine.
The winning line for Gukesh was to take Caruana's knight at f4 with his queen, but the world champion instead opted to bolster his king's defence by moving his pawn up. Caruana then offered a queen exchange, and that served a dual purpose, of distracting Gukesh from a winning line, and also forcing him into a vulnerable position. Despite promoting a pawn to a queen in the endgame, Gukesh was in a precarious position, and Caruana found accurate move after accurate move to swing a drawn game in his favour.
Caruana wins a fantastic battle against Gukesh! #FreestyleChess pic.twitter.com/KyUgozyb0l
- chess24 (@chess24com) February 9, 2025
Time trouble saw Gukesh commit further inaccuracies as Caruana squeezed Gukesh's king with his rook and a pawn that was a move away from being promoted. Gukesh saw the writing was on the wall and promptly resigned, thus handing Caruana the advantage in the two-game quarterfinal.
Earlier, Magnus Carlsen found a winning line in the opening against Nodirbek Abdusattorov, and never relinquished his advantage, driving home the pressure as his opponent crumbled and lost in 23 moves.
The winner of Sindarov vs Nakamura would face Gukesh or Caruana in the semifinal, and even though Nakamura had wrought a very advantageous position with black as the game progressed, Sindarov squeezed out a draw.
Vincent Keymer was picked by round-robin leader Alireza Firouzja as his opponent in the quarterfinal, and the German sprung quite the surprise beating his in-form opponent with black.
Game 2 of the quarterfinal will need Gukesh, Firouzja and Abdusattorov to win if they are to stay alive in the competition, as a draw will see them eliminated.
Results of Quarterfinal (Game 1), Freestyle Chess Weissenhaus:
D Gukesh 0-1 Fabiano Caruana
Magnus Carslen 1-0 Nodirbek Abdusattorov
Alireza Firouzja 0-1 Vincent Keymer
Jakovhir Sindarov 0.5-0.5 Hikaru Nakamura