Weissenhaus:

 World Champion D Gukesh’s winless run in the first tournament of the year, Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour continued on Monday as well. The Indian Grandmaster resigned against world No.2 Fabiano Caruana in just 18 moves in a must-win fixture. He had already lost to Caruana in the first leg of the quarterfinals (chess 960 classical format) on Sunday and another defeat in the Game 2 has dashed his hopes of winning a title. He will now contend for a 5th-8th place classification spot while the American chess grandmaster has sailed into the semi-finals. Gukesh was playing with black pieces and he needed a draw to survive and force the game into a tiebreaker. However, it turned out to a very brief contest odds tilted against the Indian. Gukesh was down a pawn, his king was in plain sight of his opponent and there was a lacko f scope for counterplay. All these factors led to Gukesh resigning after 18 moves.

“It really came down to yesterday. He probably could have posed more problems for me. He tried to sacrifice a pawn and create imbalances…but it just didn’t work out and his compensation completely fizzled out where he was just in a hopeless situation early on. He didn’t want to prolong the torture which I understand and his chances of winning the game were approximately zero,” Caruana said after the match.

During the Game 1 of his quarterfinal against Caruana, Gukesh stunned the commentators with a calm heart rate - 61, picked up by the sensors. The game was in balance and it might have swung anyone’s way. Caruana showed attacking instinct to take a full point from the contest.

Gukesh recorded seven draws and two losses in the round-robin stage. He conceded defeats against Magnus Carlsen and Alireza Firouzja in the rapid round robin section. He just scraped through the quarterfinals finishing at the eighth spot in a 10-man field.

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