Daniil Dubov

Russian GM

“Gukesh is unquestionably the champion. Gukesh is an absolutely legitimate World Champion, he absolutely deserved it. Moreover, I do not share the idea that Gukesh is somehow not a proper World Champion. Even when people talk about playing strength — I disagree. Okay, you live in an era when there is Magnus, but this has happened before in history. Gukesh is not 15th in the world. For me, he is definitely in the top five in terms of strength. And, frankly, that is quite decent for such a person to become World Champion. Because the World Champion is the one who won the World Championship. It’s not necessarily the strongest in the world. If it were always the strongest, and it was obvious, you could simply not hold a World Championship at all!

It’s just unclear why a World Championship is needed when Magnus exists. Either Magnus wins and that’s it, or Magnus doesn’t win and you say it’s a ‘fake’ Champion. Then why are you doing this? There is no good outcome. You need someone to emerge, play like Magnus or better, and then defeat Magnus. But if such a person appears, you will know anyway. He just doesn’t exist yet. If someone reaches 2850, you will notice without a cycle.

Of all the young generation, he is the strongest for me. This is not the most obvious statement, but I truly think that head-to-head or in a long match-tournament, he would beat all these Erigaisis, Keymers, Abdusattorovs. It seems to me that Gukesh played his three best tournaments at the most important moment of his life. Two Olympiads and the Candidates. When a person peaks at the right time — that is the most important quality. If we are not witch-hunting, that is impressive. This quality of winning when it matters is very important.

It doesn’t matter how you play for 300 days a year. Your final accolades and Wikipedia are influenced by roughly 50 days in your life. World Championships, Rapid, Blitz — you have three days, you can win or not. Then you can play however you want for a year, but if you won — it remains. I know from myself. So yes, he is cool.”