I have 2 great news today.

First, my next course is at its final stages. It will be about chess strategy and it will be the perfect complement of my last course "The Complete Chess Tactics Bootcamp". The course will be ready on April 30th, so mark that date to get the best offers!

The second important thing is that yesterday the 2024 Candidates Tournament finished and we have a challenger!

17-year-old Dommaraju Gukesh convincingly won the tournament with 9/14 points, and he will play against world champion Ding Liren to have a chance to become the youngest world chess champion ever!

As I had previously anticipated, Gukesh had been playing the best chess in the tournament.

Despite being a teenager, Gukesh is very passionate about chess and has been studying hard for many years. For todays lesson, I studied all of his games from the Candidates and tried to find out what made him the better player.

I noticed some very outstanding qualities that I wanted to share with you so that you can try to incorporate them in your games.

1) Dont Panick Even when he was under extreme pressure, Gukesh kept his cool. In the second game he had the following position as Black against Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa (aka Pragg) after 15 moves:

Until this point Pragg was quickly playing his moves as he was under preparation whereas Gukesh was thinking on his own.

Black is a pawn up and could get a third pawn after 15fxe6. However, considering that White had prepared this line and also easily attack the e6-pawn in that line (White could play Bf4, Bh4 or even Nd4), Gukesh was still able to come up with a new original plan by going 15f5!? planning to go Nf6 and slowly consolidate his position. This allowed him to win his first game in the tournament.

2) Be Pragmatic Gukesh can easily find solutions to worse positions.

This is the position that he had as Black after 17 moves in his 4th game against Fabiano Caruana.

Black is under some pressure since the knight on f5 is quite strong. White might even have ideas to sacrifice with Bxh6 mounting an attack against Blacks king.

Gukesh played 17Ne7!? Planning to trade knights. After 18.Nxe5 Nxf5 19.exf5 c5!?

his idea is to trade as many pawns as possible and the extra (doubled) pawn on f5 wont be much of a difference. Gukesh drew the game comfortably.

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3) Dont Be Dogmatic In his next encounter with Caruana (this time as White), he had the following position after 26 moves:

Here Gukesh played the surprising 27.fxg5 creating 2 sets of isolated doubled pawns after 27Qxg5:

Most players would not dare to play this way as White pawns can now become targets but Gukesh ideas was to play 28.Rf3! planning to double rooks on the f-file and attack the pawn on f5. The game ended in a draw after an accurate defense by Caruana.

4) Innovate Many people have been claiming that classical chess is dead since opening preparation is now killing creativity.

However, Gukesh is ready to come up with new ideas as early as move 4!

In this position that we get after 4 moves in the Nimzo-Indian Defense, Gukesh (playing as Black against Nijat Abasov) played the move 4h6. This position has been reached in thousands of games and moves like 40-0, 4d5 or 4c5 are very common. However, the move 4h6 is pretty much unique and the idea of Nh7-f8 that Gukesh later played is new.

5) Know When to Press Gukesh is a very objective player but as soon as he can start getting ambitious, he will not hesitate.

In his game against Alireza Firouzja from the 13th round he had this position as White after 34 moves:

Here taking on f5 with 35.Nxf5 might look tempting but after 35Nh5! Black is attacking both f4 and f5. Gukesh played a few solid moves with 35.Kh2 Nh5 36.Qf2 but after 36Rg6 37.Rd5!

White is already pressing for an advantage, putting pressure on f5 and planning to double rooks on the d-file and invade with Rd7. Firouzja was not able to hold the position, giving Guskesh a very important win.

If you want to see a more detailed analysis of the positions that I show in this article, check my video analysis here: https://youtu.be/aTJxn916qxk

Read more here:

What Can You Learn From the 2024 Candidates Winner - Chess.com