Grandmaster Sasikiran Advises Gukesh on Title Defense Strategy

World champion D Gukesh is preparing to defend his title against Uzbekistan's Javokhir Sindarov later this year, and Grandmaster Krishnan Sasikiran believes the young Indian needs to sharpen some areas of his game to stay ahead.

According to Sasikiran, Gukesh's habit of creating highly complicated positions makes him dangerous, but it also often leads to time pressure. "Sometimes Gukesh takes too much risk by his unconventional play creating chaos and imbalance ... in a sense, he wants to let things go out of control, it does not matter if the position is completely in chaos," Sasikiran told PTI. "He is a champion of that kind of a game but he often gets into time trouble. So, one thing I'd advise him to concentrate on is speeding up his calculation, he definitely needs to speed up, because you don't want to consistently find yourself in a scenario where your opponent is driving you into time trouble."

The former second of five-time world champion Viswanathan Anand also stressed that strong preparation and memorisation are essential at the highest level. Gukesh has had mixed results since winning the world title, struggling in several major classical tournaments.

Sasikiran said Gukesh should focus on putting opponents in uncomfortable situations and study Sindarov's weaknesses closely. He warned that the challenger is extremely well prepared and relies heavily on memory and fast play. "From what I have seen from Sindarov, all this candidate stuff, he is also making some complications, he had prepared very deeply for the Candidates tournament. I mean very high level of chess, so this world championship match is going to be very tough," he explained.

He added that Gukesh must improve his conversion of technical positions and avoid missing chances. However, the Chennai-based Grandmaster feels 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 match experience is in Gukesh's favour, but the challenger also carries momentum," he added.

Sasikiran believes Gukesh and his team have already narrowed down a few opening choices and will continue preparing right until the match begins.