American Abhimanyu Mishra becomes youngest GM to beat World Champion in classical chess

Abhimanyu Mishra, an American with Indian roots, became the youngest Grandmaster to defeat a World Champion in a classical chess game when he got the better of D Gukesh in round 5 of the FIDE Grand Swiss at Samarkand in Uzbekistan on Monday.

Mishra, 16, holds the record for the youngest GM, having attained the title at 12. Gukesh, 19, became the youngest World Champion when he defeated Ding Liren of China in the title match in Singapore last December. He was 18 then.

Mishra had white pieces and played fearlessly against the World Champion, sacrificing a knight in the 12th move to get a pawn to the 7th rank. His aggressive style pushed Gukesh into a defensive shape. Gukesh gave up his extra piece to try and find drawing chances in a double-rook end game, but Mishra smartly advanced another pawn to the verge of queening, and won by resignation on the 61st move.

India No 1 R Praggnanandhaa too lost his first game of the event, against German GM Matthias Bluebaum. Arjun Erigaisi maintained his unbeaten run with victory over Nikita Vitiugov to take his tally to 4 points. Iranian Parham Maghsoodloo leads the points table with 4.5 points, following his win over Richard Rapport on the top board.

Nihal Sarin and S L Narayanan, the two Malayali GMs in the event, remain unbeaten. Thrissur-native Nihal defeated compatriot Leon Luke Mendonca to get to 3.5 points, while Narayanan from Thiruvananthapuram split a point with Lu Shanglei for his fifth straight draw.

Meanwhile, GM Divya Deshmukh, one of the two women in the open category, lost to Shamsiddin Vokhidov. Divya (2478) was on a three-game unbeaten run, which included a win over 2636-rated Bassem Amin in round 4.