Bengaluru: Grzegorz Gajewski was on his way to dinner on Thursday night, running through lines for Friday’s possible tie-breaks when Ding Liren blundered and lost in what was seemingly a drawn endgame. The match ended abruptly and at 18, Gukesh Dommaraju turned the 18th world champion.

It was the pay-off of a strategy that Team Gukesh, led by Gajewski, had put in place.

“Ding was a bit of a mystery coming into this match…During the match, every day, we were learning new things about him — the way he plays, also the way he feels and evaluates positions,” the 39-year-old Pole told HT on Friday. “Actually, quite quickly, we came up with this idea that it’s best to make Ding play for as long as possible, every single game, ideally six hours, just to exhaust him. We assumed that in the long run, this strategy just has to pay off. It eventually did.”

While Gajewski was in Singapore with Gukesh, the rest of the 18-year-old Indian’s team was tucked away in Spain. The Polish-Indian-German combine of Radoslaw Wojtaszek, Pentala Harikrishna and Vincent Keymer stayed put in a rented seaside villa, an hour from Malaga, in the south of Spain and remotely helped with the ideas for the games. Gukesh revealed his team only after he won the match on Thursday.

“Countries such as Poland, Germany or Czech Republic in late November or December, are not the best places to spend a couple of weeks together. The weather is simply miserable most of the time. Spain is glorious because the sun is just pleasant. Of course, the time zones helped because the moment the games started in Singapore, the guys woke up and we could discuss the next day’s game. So, I think it worked out beautifully,” said Gajewski.

The team was handpicked ahead of the Candidates tournament, which Gukesh won.

Polish GM Wojtaszek — who has worked closely with Gajewski in the past and was part of Viswanathan Anand’s World Championship-winning team between 2008-2012, was an “obvious choice”. Anand had picked Gajewski to be part of his team for the 2014 match against Magnus Carlsen on Wojtaszek’s (Radek) recommendation.

“Radek already knew my work very well because we were together for some years. I guess it was the opposite this time. Just his experience and the quality of work he’s been doing made him an obvious choice. Hari made a lot of sense because of his understanding of the game. He has a great feel for positions and is a very intuitive player. These are exactly the areas that Gukesh has to keep working on, so he made perfect sense. Also, the fact that he’s Indian and Gukesh feels comfortable with him.”

For the Candidates, Gajewski brought in 17-year-old Polish GM, Jan Klimkowski. “We thought someone that young would bring a fresh approach and would be enthusiastic to help as much as possible, which he did.”

The team for the match against Ding already had Harikrishna and Wojtaszek; what it needed, Gajewski thought, was “a top player”.

Enter Keymer.

In the past, Gukesh has spoken of his friendship with 20-year-old Keymer, ranked 20 in the world. “Despite being very young and a potential rival, Vincent was happy to join the team. Gukesh always liked him so that was super important. When you spend weeks together in training camps there needs to be some kind of chemistry because this process is a lot of hard work. Obviously, the fact that he’s one of the top players right now from the younger generation was great. He’s technically one of Gukesh’s competitors, so it was good to see how he approaches the game, approaches openings and the way he functions.”

It was Keymer, Gajewski revealed, who was the brains behind the 7. Re1 surprise of Game 7, now billed as perhaps the idea of the match.

Polish GM Jan-Krzysztof Duda, ranked 14, was with the team during and between camps and before the Candidates.

“Duda is one of the best blitz players in the world. He and Gukesh played maybe something like 300 training games. It was good training for Gukesh and also helped him get familiarised with the openings we were trying.”

Gajewski pointed out that he felt that Ding’s preparation was “not as deep and thorough” – “We quickly realised that if we are early with our surprises, it would be very hard for them to surprise us. We managed to predict many scenarios, even the final game. The preparation we had for the final game pretty much summarises our approach — both its upsides and downsides. Ding was supposed to surprise Gukesh but it ended up the other way around. Then again, how good objectively the line was is questionable and during the game I was full of doubts. Also, Gukesh quickly forgot the lines. In the end what we were aiming for — which is getting a game and kicking his opponent out of preparation, turned out to be a good approach.”

During the match, the main challenge, Gajewski offered, was for Gukesh to find the right mindset to challenge and beat his own weaknesses. “Gukesh had to face all his weaknesses during this match. There was so much uncertainty, so much pressure and so much hope riding on him. All of it together can actually do a lot of damage to the way you play… In the last four games, Gukesh just found the perfect mental state.”

Gajewski calls Ding’s performance in this match where he “kept finding defensive resources” as “one of his best in years”. “Despite what everyone was saying before the match, we knew he was going to fight hard and the match wasn’t going to be easy. Obviously, there was this thought in the back of our heads that maybe he will collapse like he eventually did in the last two minutes, maybe he will just come and lose a drawish position without a fight. But you try to stay away from those thoughts because they make you less focused.”

Team Gukesh is still coming to terms with the summit they were working toward for months, being scaled. Maybe the bungee jump that Gukesh and Gajewski have planned for Saturday will help.

“It’s a strange feeling because you’ve been waiting for this and then it hits you that it’s already happened,” said Gajewski. “It’s hard to suddenly define yourself in this new situation.”