For the past few years, the act of resetting the pieces on the chess board after a game has become world champion D Gukesh’s signature move. He does it after bruising defeats. Does it after drab draws. He definitely does it after epoch-making victories. He famously did it after beating Ding Liren in game 14 of the world championship in Singapore, a victory which formalised his ascendency as the newest world champion. He also did it after that emotion-charged game against Magnus Carlsen at Norway Chess last year—the one that ended with the world no 1 smashing his fist on the table in a bout of rage before resigning. Gukesh also did it after two recent defeats to arch-rival Nodirbek Abdusattorov, once, in January at the Tata Steel Chess tournament after making one of the worst blunders of his career and then again on Sunday after another blunder led to a second consecutive defeat to the Uzbek GM. But on Tuesday evening, for once, the 19-year-old world champion was too upset after defeat to Aravindh Chithambaram to care for such things as rituals.
Right after he had resigned his sixth round game against Aravindh, a wounded Gukesh speedwalked himself out of the playing hall, pausing only for a brief second to sign the scoresheets as dictated by regulations. Then, he was out of there. It was understandable. Tuesday’s defeat means that Gukesh not only slumped to World No 20 in the live FIDE ratings that are updated in real-time, but he also slid down to last spot in the Prague International Chess Festival standings among 10 players. After six rounds, Gukesh has lost thrice and drawn the other three games. These results have cost him 19 ratings points.
The game against Aravindh was again decided by a late error from Gukesh who had to make five moves from his 35th to the 40th move with just seconds on his clock. At that stage, the engine evaluation only slightly favoured Aravindh. Gukesh had a rook and a pawn more on the board to counter his opponent having two knights. But then, Gukesh allowed both of Aravindh’s knights and his rook to squat on the e file, making things claustrophobically hard for his king on h2.
INTERACTIVE: How Gukesh lost to Aravindh
https://lichess.org/broadcast/prague-international-chess-festival-2026–masters/round-6/su8Pe1B4
The game-changing blunder from Gukesh came on move 40, right before both players got an additional 30 minutes on their clocks. With Aravindh’s knight on e2 attacking his rook on g3, Gukesh moved the rook to f3, aligning it with the second white rook on f2. That turned out to be a fatal mistake: the engine said that he should have played d3.
“Probably f4 (37. f4) was the crucial mistake because it allowed my knight to jump on like e3 and e2 squares. Maybe if he had played rook d2 instead of f4 like I guess the game would have ended in a draw,” Aravindh told the tournament’s YouTube handle in an interview.
Tuesday’s game was not only time recently that the world champion has found himself in dire time trouble multiple times at the tournament.
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“One of the crucial factors today, I believe, was the time situation. He (Gukesh) was actually getting low on time and with two knights on the board, it actually can get tricky like it happened in the game. So I wanted to not let him find a direct way to equalize the position. Time actually played a crucial factor,” Aravindh said. “If he had time I think he would have definitely found rook d3 (on move 40, where Gukesh blundered the game away by playing 40.Rgf3). Rook to d3 was the only move he could have made (to save the game).”
The prodigiously-talented Aravindh is someone who is not too high on confidence himself these days.
“It was a hard game for both of us. Coming into the game, both of us were having a bad tournament,” Aravindh said after he had ended his bad tournament but deepened the frown lines on Gukesh’s forehead.
“It was very hard to actually play this game, but I’m happy that I broke my losing streak and managed to win a single game,” he added.
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For the world champion, the rest of the tournament is unlikely to bring any respite: Gukesh will play Iranian GM Parham Maghsoodloo, GM Vincent Keymer of Germany and GM David Anton Guijarro of Spain in the last three rounds.
Gukesh needs a reset, and fast!
