Responding to Garry Kasparov’s criticism of world chess champion D Gukesh, chess legend Susan Polgar defended Gukesh, saying that he deserved to be the current world classical champion.

Gukesh recently fell victim to criticism from Garry Kasparov, who downplayed the Indian grandmaster’s World Championship victory in Singapore last year. Kasparov feels that Gukesh can’t even be called the strongest player in the world as he is not even better than Magnus Carlsen yet. Kasparov also feels that Gukesh hasn’t proved his superiority over players of his own age, too, and cited his defeat to R Praggnanandhaa in the first round of the Sinquefield Cup as an example. Kasparov said that Gukesh could not be compared to the likes of him, Carlsen, Anatoly Karpov or Bobby Fischer.

Responding to Kasparov’s criticism, Susan Polgar posted on X, “Gukesh is a deserving World Classical Champion, period! He went through the FIDE Candidates as an 18-year-old, the youngest in the tournament, and came out ahead of big stars like Fabiano Caruana, Hikaru Nakamura, Ian Nepomniachtchi, Alireza Firouzja, and Pragg, etc. It was not his fault that Magnus Carlsen walked away from his title. If we, as a chess community, delegitimise his title because he did not beat Carlsen, then we need to do the same for world champions after Bobby Fischer, since he also walked away from his title! We cannot have different standards for players we like or dislike.”

Gukesh is the youngest-ever world champion in history, and he is also the youngest player to cross a FIDE rating of 2750, which he did at the age of 17, and the third-youngest to get past 2700 Elo, which he did at the age of 16. He became a Grandmaster at the age of 12 and qualified for the World Championship match against Ding Liren after winning the Candidates Tournament.

Kasparov takes a dig at Vishy

Speaking during the Sinquefield Cup broadcast, Kasparov took a dig at former world chess champion Viswanathan Anand when asked about their upcoming match, saying, “I think I should give Vishy a chance to improve our score!”

Anand and Kasparov’s match will be played between October 7 and 11. It will have a US $144,000 prize fund. Their games will be played in the rapid and blitz time controls.