Gukesh Plays Aggressive Sicilian Opening Against Idol Anand in Global Chess League Match

What do chess players do when they want to pick a fight over the board? If they’re playing with black pieces, they’re likely to play the Sicilian opening, a razor-sharp option which sends a signal to the opponent that you’re itching for a battle over the 64 squares. That’s exactly what world champion D Gukesh did when he faced off against his idol and mentor Viswanathan Anand in a Global Chess League clash on Tuesday. Anand might be semi-retired, but he hasn’t lost his appetite for a good fight and forced his protege to resign in 45 moves as his team Ganges Grandmasters defeated the teenage world champion’s PBG Alaskan Knights 12-3. The Sicilian Defence, the weapon of choice for the sport’s most ferocious fighters like Garry Kasparov and Bobby Fischer, starts off by responding to white’s 1.e4 with a push of the black’s c pawn to c5 rather than the more preferred response with the e or d pawns. The idea behind the Sicilian is to break the symmetry in the centre and destabilise the position. It almost always leads to a sharp fight. On Tuesday,Gukeshnot only opted for a fight against the man he calls ‘Vishy sir’, but chose to play the Kan Variation of the Sicilian, thus trying to give the man who got the teenager dreaming about becoming world champion some day a flashback to the 2014 World Championship match against Magnus Carlsen.