When the whole country India is celebrating D Gukesh’s victory as the youngest-ever world champion, another Indian Grandmaster Pentala Harikrishna also reached a rare feat by becoming the first who worked as a second to both the current women’s and open world champions.
However, there’s a tiny Chinese crush here. While Pentala Harikrishna worked to bring China laurels working as a second to GM Ju Wenjun during her World Championship match in 2023, he was in Gukesh’s team that masterminded the downfall of Chinese GM Ding Liren earlier this week.
Pentala Harikrishna said TOI on Saturday “I am very happy to be part of the journey of both the current World championships. I think it’s quite rare and I will always cherish the experience,”
In doing so, Hari also connects his India mate Surya Sekhar Ganguly, a second in a winning cause helping Vishwananthan Anand bag three title versus Kramnik, Topalov and Gelfand in 2008,2010 and 2012, respectively.
Of the current match in Singapore, Hari discloses that Gukesh took a final step towards becoming the 18th world chess champion when, playing with white, he enforced Ding to resign in Game No. 11. Gukesh zeroed in on this specific set-up and it turned out to be an excellent choice,” Hari disclosed.
The Ex. World junior champion’s association with Gukesh start early of this this year 2024. “I started working with him( Gukesh) before the candidates in April of this year. Our preparation went on for almost a year,” he told, “We had face-to-face camps in India and Poland and also held session online.”
The 38-year-old Guntur-born Hari told “There were no specific roles for three of us (German GM Vincent Kymer, Polish GM Radoslaw Wojtaszek and Hari). We talked about a lot of idea to give the best output and yes, we did a lot of work on the opening,”
However, Hari based in Spain now, he did not travel to Singapore. But that didn’t stop him from working during the 14 games. “We are an hour’s drive from Malaga. We would start working once Gukesh went for the match, and since we were seven hours behind, We had a lot of time to find ideas,” he told.
