Anatoly Karpov

12th World Champion

“Firstly, Gukesh became World Champion by accident because he was not supposed to win the match against Ding Liren. Liren lost a game he shouldn’t have lost. Ding would have remained World Champion then.

But if we talk about the overall situation of how Gukesh became World Champion, it’s the result of a serious state program for chess in India. I don’t know who advised their leaders, but Indian chess players are already dominating international tournaments.

The government helped, at the very least, by buying apartments or renting apartments which they gave to chess players, and they traveled from tournament to tournament, staying in this apartment to avoid spending money on travel and accommodation.

This produced results, many grandmasters appeared. And at some point, organizers of chess tournaments in Europe even thought about how to limit the number of Indians in a single tournament. So that, say, no more than three representatives of India would compete in one tournament.

Carlsen is effectively still the Champion. Officially it’s Gukesh, but because Carlsen stopped playing. And so Carlsen, if he wanted to, could take the crown back.”