Magnus Carlsen showed young Dommaraju Gukesh the finer points of rook-and-pawn endgames as he scored first blood and moved closer to the semifinals along with Arjun Erigaisi in the distaff side of the FIDE World Cup Tuesday in Baku, Azerbaijan.
The 32-year-old Carlsen, who has held the world No. 1 ranking for the last 12 years and has surpassed the all-time rating since, won with the black side of the Queen’s Indian Defense against Gukesh, 17, the prodigious talent from India.
Gukesh, the new No. 1 player and rising star from Chennai, can only stave off elimination by winning at all costs — with the black pieces — the second of the best-of-two games employing classical chess time controls.
A win forces sudden-death tiebreaks on Thursday.
Coming out of semi-retirement, Carlsen chose not to defend the title of classical world chess champion last year, having won it five times in his storied career. He, however, has not won the World Cup crown since and is determined to win it this year along with the $110,000 top purse.
