Following his victory over Ding Liren in December of last year, Gukesh Dommaraju, the youngest world champion in history, has had an intriguing few months. In his debut tournament as the current world champion of the sport, the 18-year-old nearly won the famous Tata Steel chess event in Wijk aan Zee before falling short against Praggnanandhaa in a tie-break. He has been in a bit of a rut ever since, losing a few Freestyle Chess tournaments. He had zero victories, eleven draws, and six losses at the Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour's opening event at Weissenhaus, which was especially discouraging..

Additionally, Gukesh suffered at the Paris leg. He then barely avoided finishing last at the Superbet Chess Classic Romania tournament in Bucharest, where he shared sixth place with three other players after managing just one victory, six draws, and two losses.

However, the classical world champion returned with a bang at Norway Chess, setting a number of firsts, including his first classical triumph over world no. 1 Magnus Carlsen (the match in which Carlsen famously smashed the table with his hand) and his first classical victory over fellow countryman Arjun Erigaisi. He finished third in the standings despite trailing Carlsen by barely half a point going into the final round.

Viswanathan Anand Grades Gukesh For Norway Performance

After Gukesh's performance in Norway Chess, his coach, five-time world champion Viswanathan Anand, upgraded his grade from a C, which he had given him before to the event in Norway, to a B.

"I think I will go up to B. He deserved a D, but he got a lot of answers correct somehow (at Norway Chess). So that’s a B. Given that he survived and based on his points, I would give him a B," Anand told Chess.com.

Anand gave Gukesh a "C minus" when he was asked to evaluate him for six months prior to the Norway Chess tournament.

“I think I would say only “D minus”, but Wijk aan Zee is pulling him to “D plus” maybe or “C minus”,” Anand had said before Norway Chess.

“He played extremely well (at Wijk aan Zee). Kind of rebound effect. I mean, you always have this fear that after the world championship, you suddenly have some emptiness. But in fact, for him, the first event was extremely successful. The rest of the year has been much more discreet, which is also maybe normal. Everybody treats him differently. He’s finding his way. What would I put on a report card? I think “needs further improvement” is kind of obvious; “Must work harder”… something like that. He’s still very strong and he just needs to find the right connections again,” Anand had said in his assessment before Norway Chess.

Anand further noted that Gukesh still needs to catch up with the more experienced players like Fabianio Caruana, Magnus Carlsen, and Hikaru Nakamura when discussing Norway Chess in a subsequent interview with Chess.com, adding that the teenager has a lot of space for progress.

“At Norway Chess, Gukesh made a lot of questionable decisions in his moves and not in time trouble. He did it in the earlier phase of the game. Quite some people criticized that and I think the criticism is fair. Some of it at least. The two games he won with Magnus and Arjun are really the questionable ones. I’ll grant you all that. But then let me turn the same question: How many people in the world can beat Arjun and Magnus from these positions? There are many things to criticize about his play. He was under the same time pressure as them. Second, if Hikaru or Magnus had escaped from some of these positions, we’d just say, ‘But they’re very strong.’ Same logic has to apply here," Anand said.

I’m sort of conflicted. On the one hand, I feel that we can’t just say he played a great tournament because he finished on 50%. Also, the fact that you have such defensive skills doesn’t mean you should be depending on them all the time. For instance, most countries have armies in order not to use them all the time. You don’t want to depend too much on these skills. But you have to say he was very resourceful,” he added.