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The 17-year-old Grandmaster has risen to the top of Indias chess pack and a Candidates berth to challenge the best in the world looks within reach. The jury for TOIs #Unstoppable21 campaign has picked the Chennai teenager as one of the Unstoppable 21 Indians under 21 yearsHighs and lows are part and parcel of a sportspersons life and it invariably boils down to how one deals with them.Indian Grandmaster D Gukesh, the prodigy who has taken the chess world by storm and surpassed the legendary Viswanathan Anand as Indias No. 1 in the live FIDE rankings, experienced them all in the last 12 months, en route to scripting history. He followed it up with a creditable quarterfinal finish in the recently-concluded World Cup in Baku where R Praggnanandhaa won the silver. Gukesh, though, looks all set to join Prag in the elite eight-player Candidates event next April, the winner of which will take on the current world champion Ding Liren.Gukesh has been a force in recent times, but he shot to limelight at the Chess Olympiad in Mamallapuram last year. The teenage sensation clinched the individual gold with an unbelievable 9 out of 11 points in a field which comprised the likes of Magnus Carlsen and Fabiano Caruana, among others. Representing the India 2 team that had bagged bronze, the 17-year-old had an unstoppable streak eight wins on the bounce. After becoming Indias poster boy at a tournament where he had delivered a number of breathtaking performances, Gukesh went through a rough patch, by his lofty standards, in the months that followed. All of us go through a phase where we do not know what we are doing. It was the same for him, Gukeshs coach, GM Vishnu Prasanna, told TOI.

D Gukesh

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Chess World Cup final: Carlsen beats Praggnanandhaa in tie-breaks to win the title

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For 36 years, Vishwanathan Anand was number 1 in India. Then Gukesh happened - IndiaTimes