Twelve-year-old D Gukesh made a strong start to his bid to become the world’s youngest Grandmaster winning his first two rounds in the Sunway Sitges chess tournament in Barcelona.
The Chennai-lad, who has till December 29 to break Sergey Karjakin’s record, needs to earn his third and final GM norm in Barcelona which will also take his ELO rating beyond the 2500 mark.
In the opening round, Gukesh defeated David Maloberti of France and then got the better of compatriot CM Rahil Mullick with black pieces to take his points tally to two from two games.
As things stand, Gukesh is currently tied with 28 others in joint lead including India’s R Vaishali, Arjun Kalyan, Raunak Sadhwani, R Rithvik Raja, Saumya Swaminathan and Krishnan Sasikiran among others.
However, the real challenge for Gukesh, who started the tournament ranked 35th, would start now as he would now be playing higher rated players.
In the third round, Gukesh will face GM Daniele Vocaturo of Italy, who is almost 150 ELO points ahead of the Indian.