What do chess players do when they want to pick a fight over the board? If they’re playing with black pieces, they’re likely to play the Sicilian opening, a razor-sharp option which sends a signal to the opponent that you’re itching for a battle over the 64 squares.
That’s exactly what world champion D Gukesh did when he faced off against his idol and mentor Viswanathan Anand in a Global Chess League clash on Tuesday. Anand might be semi-retired, but he hasn’t lost his appetite for a good fight and forced his protege to resign in 45 moves as his team Ganges Grandmasters defeated the teenage world champion’s PBG Alaskan Knights 12-3.
The Sicilian Defence, the weapon of choice for the sport’s most ferocious fighters like Garry Kasparov and Bobby Fischer, starts off by responding to white’s 1.e4 with a push of the black’s c pawn to c5 rather than the more preferred response with the e or d pawns. The idea behind the Sicilian is to break the symmetry in the centre and destabilise the position. It almost always leads to a sharp fight.
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On Tuesday, Gukesh not only opted for a fight against the man he calls ‘Vishy sir’, but chose to play the Kan Variation of the Sicilian, thus trying to give the man who got the teenager dreaming about becoming world champion some day a flashback to the 2014 World Championship match against Magnus Carlsen.
On that day 11 years ago, Anand had pushed for a fight with the Kan Variation of the Sicilian Defence in Game 6 when playing with black and had been punished by the Norwegian, who went on to take the lead in the match that he never relinquished to defend his crown.
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“The Kan Variation I didn’t exactly expect,” Anand told The Indian Express after his win over Gukesh. “But at the same time, before the tournament I had made a mental note of it, it wasn’t completely out of the blue (for me).”
Anand enjoyed a slight edge on the board against Gukesh till the 34th move, before a mistake with the rook from the world champion handed the veteran a significant advantage. With every move from that stage onwards, Anand’s position on the evaluation bar and on the clock only improved. The tournament’s rules stipulate that players only get increments of two seconds for each move after the 40th. But for a calculation-based player like Gukesh, it would have been insufficient to find an escape hatch.
How Anand defeated Gukesh
Not just legends of yore like Kasparov and Fischer, the Sicilian was the most preferred opening choice at the recent FIDE World Cup in Goa, with 77 games seeing it (with the next most popular openings being the Ruy Lopez at 63 games and the Italian at 62). This included the must-win tiebreak game between Uzbek prodigies Nodirbek Yakubboev and Javokhir Sindarov in the semis when the former was seeking a Hail Mary to avoid elimination.
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On Tuesday, Gukesh wasn’t seeking a Hail Mary. The 19-year-old was possibly looking for a statement victory. Compared to 2024 — when everything he touched turned to gold as he strode his way to the world champion’s throne — 2025 has brought losses aplenty with success being rare. The loss to Anand is Gukesh’s second in three games at the GCL with the third ending in a draw. Meanwhile, it was Anand’s first victory of the tournament after losses to Maxime Vachier-Lagrave and Fabiano Caruana.
Drama in the air
Anand and Gukesh have faced off before, most recently at an event in Zagreb. Back then, Anand had recounted how he was surprised to see a different side to the boy: a more serious, business-like approach than the playful youngster who was always smiling.
Tuesday’s game was one that Gukesh, at least, had circled on his calendar since the draw came out. As Anand had told The Indian Express before the league started, Gukesh had even reminded him which day of the league they would be facing each other when they had met at a social gathering a couple of weeks ago.
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Anand had admitted that a game between the only two chess world champions from India was likely to bring along a little extra of everything, be it drama or attention.
“These kind of extra days with extra pressure… hopefully I can rise to the occasion,” Anand had said.
On Tuesday, ‘Vishy sir’ did just that.