Only 18-years-old, Indian Grandmaster D Gukesh recently became the youngest-ever world chess champion in history. He achieved the feat by defeating defending champion Ding Liren in Singapore. The match reached the decisive fourteenth game, and a massive blunder in the 55th move by the Chinese Grandmaster saw him resign and concede to Gukesh. Gukesh’s win sent social media in a state of meltdown, with chess legends, fans and experts lauding him for his achievement. But it also received a negative reaction from some sections, including Magnus Carlsen, considered by many to be the greatest in the sport.

Carlsen downplayed Gukesh’s win and went on to call classical chess the ‘worst way’ to decide the best player in the world. The Norwegian also labelled rapid chess as ‘pure sport’. Carlsen’s sentiments were also recently echoed by Armenian-American Grandmaster Levon Aronian. Aronian’s current FIDE rating is 2747 and he ranked 11th in the world. His peak rating was 2830 in March 2014, and he was also World No. 2 in 2012.

Speaking in a podcast on the Take Take Take app, Aronian explained that if a player with a rating of 2600 gets proper training, then he or she can draw against a top-10 Grandmaster. It is to be noted that Carlsen is also a co-founder of the Take Take Take application. “100 per cent. If we think about this, if we take well-disciplined guy, let’s say a level of 2600 who studies let’s say in the openings improved Tarrasch, you know, CDCD and he studies against e4 to play the Petrov knight e5 knight e4.”

“So, basically, if we train a guy like this, he’ll be able in 80 per cent of the time to make a draw against top 10 players. That’s not what we want to see as chess fans. I don’t want to see the weaker player completely neutralising the stronger player.”

The 42-year-old also went on to compare chess with boxing and MMA, in an attempt to explain why the rapid version should be preferred. “There are certain sports that went into that and then suddenly the sport became just too boring. I know a bit about wrestling. In Greco-Roman wrestling, when you change the rules, you make them concentrate on getting the points, it becomes much less of a sport like boxing. Why is MMA so much more exciting? Because, it’s basically freestyle chess and regular boxing is like classical boxing that can turn into a very boring, technical game,” he added.

Aronian is also the fourth highest-rated player in chess history. He clinched the FIDE World Cup in 2005 and 2017. He transferred from the Armenian chess federation to the United States federation in 2021, due to lack of government support.