NEW DELHI: World champion D Gukesh is set to defend his title against Uzbekistan’s Javokhir Sindarov later this year, and Grandmaster Krishnan Sasikiran believes the young Indian needs to fine-tune some areas of his game to stay ahead. According to Sasikiran, Gukesh’s habit of creating very complicated positions makes him dangerous, but often leads to time pressure.“Sometimes Gukesh takes too much risk with his unconventional game which creates chaos and imbalance… in a sense, he wants to let things go out of control, it doesn’t matter if the position is completely in chaos,” Sasikiran told PTI.“He is a champion of this type of game, but he often gets into time problems. So, one thing I advise him to focus on is to speed up his calculation, he definitely needs to speed it up, because you don’t want to consistently find yourself in a scenario where your opponent leads you into time problems.”Former five-time world champion Viswanathan Anand also stressed that strong preparation and memorization are essential at the highest level. Gukesh has had mixed results since winning the world title, fighting in several major classical tournaments. Sasikiran said Gukesh should focus on putting opponents in uncomfortable situations and carefully study Sindarov’s weaknesses. He warned that the challenger is extremely well prepared and relies heavily on memory and fast play.“From what I saw from Sindarov, all the things of the candidate, he also makes some complications, he had prepared very deeply for the Candidates tournament. I mean a very high level of chess, so this match of the world championship will be very hard,” he explained.He added that Gukesh must improve his conversion of technical positions and avoid missing opportunities. However, the Chennai-based Grandmaster feels the experience could work in the Indian’s favour.“But Gukesh has already been at that level, he has already played a world championship match, so the match experience is in favor of Gukesh, but the challenger also carries momentum,” he added.Sasikiran believes that Gukesh and his team have already narrowed down a few opening choices and will continue to prepare till the start of the match.
