Great news. Gukesh Dommaraju has been accepted and verified as the world master in chess.
It is now well known that officially Gukesh Dommaraju of India is the 18th and youngest chess World Champion in the history of the sport that dates back to before 1900.
But since his official coronation, there have been a few messages on social media pointing out that there is a small disclaimer to be added to this record. That asterisk comes in the name of Ukrainian Grandmaster Ruslan Ponomariov.
Chess journalist and photographer David Llada posted on Friday: Let’s not forget that Ponomariov was 18 years, 3 months and 12 days old when he became World Champion.
It is not his fault that the chess world was such a mess at the time.” Peter Heine Nielsen, trainer for both Vishy Anand and Magnus Carlsen posted a picture on X that had a truck with a text “Asterisk delivery” along with the caption: “The FIDE van arrived at Ponomariov´s house today.”
According to Chess.com, the right way to describe Gukesh’s achievement would be: “youngest universally recognized champion in the history of chess. Ponomariov won a separate FIDE world title in a knockout tournament in 2002 at a slightly younger age, but not by beating the reigning champion in a match.”
Ponomariov was a prodigy who, at the age of 14 years and 17 days, became the youngest person in history to win the Grandmaster title in 1997.
In 1999, Bu Xiangzhi beat the record with 13 years, 10 months, and 13 days. Sergey Karjakin then came along and won the GM title at 12 years, 7 months, holding the record for almost 20 years.
Ponomariov did win the FIDE World Championship in 2002, but the chess community was split at the time.
He won the title through a knockout tournament with 128 players, in which Vladimir Kramnik, the “classical” world champion at the time, did not compete.
Because they were FIDE World Champions at the time, players like Ponomariov, Alexander Khalifman, Rustam Kasimdzhanov, and Veselin Topalov are not included in the timeline that makes Gukesh the 18th world champion. Gukesh is the youngest uncontested world champion, according to official records.
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