Former chess king Anand loses India's number one spot after 37 years

Gukesh won both games in the second round against home player Misratdin Iskandarov, adding four Elos to his current rating of 2,756, making him ninth in the world and India's number one, two Elos ahead of Anand. Thus India has its first number one since 1986.

Anand, 54, was the World Chess Champion from 2007 to 2013, before losing his title to Magnus Carlsen. He has been India's number one chess player for 37 consecutive years and was the world's number one in 2007. In 2016, Pentala Harikrishna equaled Anand's Elo rating, but has yet to surpass the legend.

Gukesh, 17, is currently the world's top young talent, and has made remarkable progress in the past few years. When he participated in the HDBank International Chess Tournament in Vietnam in 2019, he had an Elo of 2,529, but had not yet become a Grandmaster. Exactly two years ago, Gukesh's Elo was 2,578, but has now increased by 178 coefficients. He first entered the world's Top 100 in May 2022, and is now in the Top 10. He is also currently the youngest player in the world's Top 100.

Gukesh holds the record for being the youngest player in history to reach Elo 2,750, at the age of 17. His best result was a gold medal on board one at the 2022 Chess Olympiad in Chennai, India. Gukesh has reached the third round of the 2023 Chess World Cup, where he will face compatriot Narayanan Sunilduth Lyna.

Also in the second game, the second round of the World Cup on August 3, Vietnam's number one player Le Quang Liem held the white pieces but continued to draw with Ivan Ivanisevic. Quang Liem will have to play a rapid and blitz tie-break with this opponent, starting at 6 p.m. today, August 4. They will play two rapid games of 25 minutes, adding 10 seconds after each move (25+10 format). If they are still tied, they will play two more games of 10+10. If they are still tied, they will play two more games of 5+3. If they continue to tie, they will play more games of 3+2 until a winner is determined.

The second round witnessed surprises, when experts such as Nodirbek Abdusattorov or Shakhriyar Mamedyarov were eliminated. Many other experts had to play tie-break such as Quang Liem, Wesley So, Hikaru Nakamura, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave or Anish Giri.

The Vietnamese players all stopped in the second round, when Nguyen Thai Dai Van (Czech) lost to Aryan Tari 0.5-1.5, and Hoang Thanh Trang (Hungary) lost to Divya Deshmukh with the same score.

According to VnExpress