Bengaluru: What must it be like to fulfil your life’s greatest dream at 18? It’s been less than a week since Gukesh D became world champion beating China’s Ding Liren, and the Indian teen is still wrapping his head around this delightful predicament. In an interview to HT, Gukesh opened up about challenges, uncertainties and fresh goals, among other things.

Excerpts:

To realise the dream that got you out of bed all these years, at just 18, must be hard to process… is it a challenge to chase fresh goals?

For the last year, starting from qualifying and winning the Candidates to preparing for the match – this has been the single most important thing. To actually finish this journey on a high was huge. When I had a moment alone after my win, I just thanked God and then went through all the messages from family and friends. I hadn’t been in touch with them for a long time, so we chatted. I did not sleep the night I became world champion. But later, when I slept, woke up, and realised that I’m actually done with it, and there are no more games tomorrow, it was a weird feeling. It was weird not to have a racing heart.

It helps to know that this is not the end of the road. Becoming the best player in the world is actually what I care about the most now.

While Ding was resilient and fought brilliantly, it was you who was largely pressing in the match…how much of a difference did knowing that make on how you approached the games?

Right after game two, I realised that he is trying his best to put on a great fight. But he is not the one who is ready to be the aggressor. It’s more of a mindset. I think that gave me more freedom to put pressure on him for as long as possible and to tire him out and stuff like that. It was pretty clear from game two that I was the one who was pressing most of the game. So, yeah, it was kind of nice to know that and I was also trying to keep him on the board, because that’s how it’s supposed to go.

You were not exactly at your best. Was it hard to make peace with the fact that to win, you didn’t necessarily have to be at your best, only better than your opponent?

Yeah, absolutely. I could feel this energy but I was not quite able to go there and give it my 100 percent. Then it became important that I realised that this was something different than anything I’ve ever experienced before.

It took a lot of time to come to terms with this fact. All these draws that I was making in the seventh and eighth games, missing winning positions, was quite frustrating. But I think after Game 12 I told myself that “okay, this is a new experience, it’s a fair match and anything can happen”. I think once I made peace with that, I could focus more on just showing up and playing one game at a time.

In one of his recaps, Magnus touched upon this match perhaps turning out differently had it been Fabiano (Caruana) or Hikaru (Nakamura) instead of Ding, playing you…how do you look at it?

I think it’s a fair thing to say. But you never know. For example, one of the things in this match was the uncertainty – I didn’t know which Ding would appear for this match. If I was playing any other player, I would have probably had more clarity and maybe my mental and physical preparation would have been different. Maybe I would have been able to play at 120 per cent. So I guess you never know about these things. All that mattered in this match was that I was playing one opponent and I needed to be better than this one guy. If I played some other opponent, I would be better than that guy.

One thing that was clear for everybody in this match is that Ding is an unbelievable fighter. Although he was not at his best physically or mentally, I mean, obviously, he has some stuff he’s working on and I wish him the best.

You’ve seen a couple of world champions in your lifetime and you’ve grown up reading about a whole bunch of others. What is the kind of world champion that you want to be and what impact do you see your win having, especially in India?

Chess-wise, I want to be as dominant as possible. I want to perform at perhaps the best, keep improving, keep learning a lot and being the best version of myself. I see it as a privilege and honour to be in this position. I want to be able to do whatever duties are needed of me as a world champion. I want to do my little part to help the game, to develop it in any way I can and take it to more and more people.

To be the one to bring the title back to India feels great. It’s amazing to see people in the country so happy and passionate about it. I think, for sure, a lot of young kids can see themselves making it big and successful in chess.

The Candidates tournament is still some time away. Are you keeping tabs on the qualification and are you expecting to face an Indian challenger in 2026?

I would be very happy if the Indian guys do well and keep pushing. Because throughout our careers it’s always happened that, you know, one guy just performs well and the then the next one does well. It’s been like a cycle. Other than the Indians, there are also others doing well too. It’s going to be exciting.

You had quite a few nice ideas in the openings and Ding spent a lot of time untangling them. Which was your personal favourite perhaps?

For sure it was A3 and the French that I played in Game 13. It was probably my most favourite because it was Vincent (Keymer) who came up with the idea right after Game 1 and he had been pushing me to play it. Psychologically it was hard for me to play the French and play very similar to what happened in the first game.

After I managed to overcome this emotional barrier, I played the idea and started to appreciate it. I had a lot of fun executing it. Full credit to my team, especially Vincent. It worked out very well.

Did you consider any other Indian players (apart from Pentala Harikrishna) for your team at any point?

Our main goal was to create a kind of team where everyone comes together. These guys have known each other for a long time so the bond was really nice. I mean, maybe we thought of a few strong (Indian) players, but this mix that we had on our team seemed really good.

What does winning all this money mean to you and how are you going to spend this break?

This money gives us a kind of financial stability. My family and I have gone through a lot. I’ll be playing next in Wijk Aan Zee (in January 2025). For now, a vacation would be nice.