Ads, new trainers and lucky jacket: World chess champion D Gukesh opens up on how life has changed

D Gukesh is just a teenager, but his life is anything but regular. At 17, he became the youngest to win the FIDE Candidates in 2025, and at 18, he became the youngest world chess champion later the same year. Now 19, he is traversing another challenge, living up to the reputation of being the best in the world.

It hasn’t been easy by any stretch. Chess great Garry Kasparov recently undermined Gukesh’s World Chess Championship win by saying that Magnus Carlsen was the last classical world champion, who was also the strongest player in the world. Earlier, world No 1 Carlsen and former world champion Vladimir Kramnik had also criticised Gukesh in their own ways.

While not every criticism is unfair, it is certainly wrong to blame Gukesh for Carlsen relinquishing the world title in 2022 or for other top players failing to win it since. The Chennai Grandmaster earned his crown fair and square.

He also beat Carlsen for the first time in a classical match earlier this year, and is now taking part in the FIDE Grand Swiss 2025 in Uzbekistan despite not fighting for a spot in the Candidates 2026. Grand Swiss offers two Candidates 2026 spots, but being the world champion, Gukesh wouldn’t be taking part in that tournament. He would face the Candidates winner in the World Chess Championship 2026.

Nonetheless, the learning never stops, and that’s what drove Gukesh to Samarkand, to play in a new format and prove himself. “There are not many super-strong open Swiss tournaments. It’s an opportunity for me to play in a different format and prove myself,” Gukesh said in the pre-tournament press conference.

Gukesh speaks on Grand Swiss challenge

After securing a first-round win over Etienne Bacrot in just 45 moves with the black pieces on Thursday, Gukesh was asked if he had managed to prove what he set out to do. His reply highlighted his maturity and vision quite aptly.

“It’s still too early in the tournament,” Gukesh told FIDE. “I’m obviously glad with the win with the black pieces in the first round. It’s a nice start, but I think (I should) not get ahead of myself. There’s still a long way to go.”

While FIDE Grand Swiss is also a classical-format tournament, it uses the Swiss system to determine the matches. Instead of the traditional round-robin format of a classical tournament, the parings are made between players with similar scores in each round. It’s also unusually 11-round long and has a massive time control of 100 minutes for 40 moves plus an extra 50 minutes for the next 20 moves, and 15 more minutes for the rest of the game. There’s also a 30-second increment per move from move one.

I guess you got the gist that it’s a very long tournament. Asked how Gukesh keeps fresh for events and matches so long, the world champion said: “I think sleeping well, eating well, saving energy whenever possible because it’s an 11-round tournament. It’s a pretty long one. So to prepare well, sleep well, and come to the board with 100% focus.”

Gukesh on lucky jacket and advertisement with Viswanathan Anand

The World Chess Championship win has also made a usually reserved Gukesh go out of his way and participate in multiple events and commercial activities that a world champion has to. One of his most famous off-the-board acts was the advertisement with five-time world champion Viswanathan Anand, which went super viral.

While striking a balance between chess and commercial activities has been a challenge, Gukesh wouldn’t have it any other way around.

“There has been a lot of stuff that has changed since the World Championship. Lots of ads and lots of attention, obviously,” Gukesh added. “Overall, it’s a great thing for me and chess. Through these advertisements, chess becomes more popular in the public eye, and one of things that has been the challenges is to balance my extra activities with my chess training and my chess tournaments. In the last few months, we have settled into it, my team and I. A Lot of nice opportunities on and off the board, which I am happy about.”

Just like the World Championship, Gukesh continues to train under Grandmaster Grzegorz Gajewski of Poland, but has also tried new trainers to keep himself sharp.

“Not just my chess team (on being asked if people around him have grown in numbers). People who take care of other things and stuff like that also. I mean Gaju (Grzegorz Gajewski) is always there as my head trainer and I have been working with a few others from time to time. It’s always nice to work with new people to get new ideas.”

As he carried his grey hoodie, the FIDE host couldn’t resist asking about it. Gukesh clarified that it isn’t a lucky mascot, but simply protection against the often freezing chess halls.

“I mean, the thing is like whenever I play FIDE events, the first round or two rounds, I struggle a bit with the temperature in the room because I am not used to very cold temperatures. In the Candidates’ first round, I remember I was shivering, maybe not the World Chess Championship but the Olympiad was quite cold, so I just thought I’ll bring it in for safety, it was actually quite warm in the paying hall,” Gukesh signed off.