D Gukesh

 D Gukesh was in sensational form on Thursday, as he staged a sensational comeback to hold Alireza Firouzja to a draw, in their 7th position playoff match at the Weissenhaus leg of the ongoing Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour

D Gukesh will be hoping to grab his first win of the ongoing Weissenhaus Freestyle Chess Grand Slam event

D Gukesh was in sensational form on Thursday, as he staged a sensational comeback to hold Alireza Firouzja to a draw, in their 7th position playoff match at the Weissenhaus leg of the ongoing Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour

It was a closely-fought encounter and at one point, it looked like Gukesh would crumble to another defeat, but somehow managed to stage a comeback. Fans were left surprised as Gukesh used all his grit and experience to manage a draw. The evaluation bar was in Alireza’s favour for most parts of the game. Then the bar was down totally for Gukesh when Alireza had over 18 minutes left on his clo Indian GM had only 47 seconds.

Also Read: Arjun Erigaisi spills the beans on losing India No. 1 spot to D Gukesh: ‘One of the toughest tournaments of my life’

Gukesh had to take a defensive approach after an early blunder, but the important point came when Alireza decided to exchange rooks when he was a pawn up. The game was played over 92 moves and finally ended as a draw, giving Gukesh a fighting chance as he will now have the white pieces on Friday.

Meanwhile, Gukesh also lost in his previous match, crashing to a defeat against Hikaru Nakamura in the rapid tiebreaker round. Speaking to Chess.com, Nakamura analysed Gukesh’s weaknesses. He said, “I would say probably the biggest weakness Gukesh currently has is that when he gets low on time, I don’t think his intuition is that great, and he simply couldn’t work through the calculations.”