In a stark contrast to how he started his campaign in the ongoing 2025 Clutch Chess: Champions Showdown, India’s D Gukesh surrendered the top spot to his rival Magnus Carlsen and himself dropped to joint-third
after enduring three defeats and as many draws on the second day of the competition.
World champion Gukesh lost to Magnus Carlsen in both the games of round four before drawing both the games against Hikaru Nakamura in round five.
Gukesh suffered his third defeat of the day, this time to Fabiano Caruana, before drawing game two, ending the day winless.
He’s now joint-last alongside Nakamura with 7 points. Carlsen leads the showdown with 11.5 points, while Caruana is second with 10.5 points.
Gukesh wants to forget the second day and start afresh.
“I was just not able to be sharp today. I was taking a lot of time, which I shouldn’t have. Forget what happened and come fresh tomorrow,” Gukesh was quoted as saying by chess.com.
Meanwhile, five-time world champion Carlsen termed his first win of the day against Gukesh as “the only good game that I played in this tournament.”
Still, he ranked the day “better than yesterday.”
“I mean, I would like to have a little bit more control in my games than I did today, but you know, I’ll take the result, of course,” Carlsen said.
What is Clutch Chess 2025?
The brainchild of Grandmaster Maurice Ashley, the three-day event is an 18-game rapid double round-robin format (10 minutes plus a 5-second increment). It features escalating point values each day: Wins are worth 1 point on Day 1, 2 points on Day 2, and 3 points on Day 3. The format means that slow starters can roar back into contention, while the leader cannot sit comfortably at any point.
On Day 1, each win is worth 1 point and $1,000. For Day 2, each win is worth 2 points and $2,000. And for Day 3, each win is worth 3 points and $3,000.
It features the world’s best chess players including the world No. 1 Magnus Carlsen, world No. 2 Hikaru Nakamura, world No. 3 Fabiano Caruana, and World Champion Gukesh Dommaraju.
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