"How do we view Gukesh? A 2790 player in a slump, or a 2710 player who's on a downward trend?" — Fabiano Caruana

Fabiano Caruana

World's No. 3

“[Cristian Chirila: I put more weight on the pedigree]

It’s fair. I’m not sure it’s objective, but there is an argument for it. It is very closely tied to the question of how do we view Gukesh? Do we view him as a 2790 player in a slump, or a 2710 player who’s actually on a downward trеnd?

Of course, we saw his achievements. And in 2024 I was saying he’s been playing the best chess in Classical chess of anyone that year. The achievements of that year are hard to argue. With the Candidates being outstanding, the Olympiad being a historical performance.

[Cristian Chirila: Gukesh is an outlier. He just doesn’t have a comparison. He’s the youngest World Champion. He had one of the best years in chess history. And right now, he’s just completely unrecognizable. I cannot remember any player with this profile.]

It’s definitely an unusual trajectory. And how you view him? As the guy who’s just going through a periodic slump and will recover, or the guy who had a generationally good run? Which was perhaps — I don’t want to say lucky, I’m not going to use that word, it was obviously fully deserved — but it wasn’t his level that he can consistently maintain. Those are two different viewpoints.

If we look at the last two years, maybe the latter is actually more justifiable. Because there’s only so long that you can say: ‘It’s just a bad period’, right? After two years, you might start to say: ‘It’s maybe not just a bad period. It’s maybe a trend that we should pay attention to’.”