Gukesh Dommaraju’s best games aren’t showy 20-move miniatures — they’re long, nervy, high-stakes fights where his calculation and his nerves both held up when it mattered most. Here are three that already belong to chess history. We describe them in prose (with the verified results and key moments) so you can follow the story, then go replay the full moves at the linked sources.
1. Gukesh vs. Alireza Firouzja — Candidates Tournament 2024, Round 13
This is the game that put Gukesh one step from the throne. Heading into the penultimate round of the 2024 Candidates in Toronto, the tournament was a tangle — several players still in the hunt for the single spot to challenge the World Champion. Gukesh had White against Alireza Firouzja, the one opponent who had already beaten him in the event.
What made it special wasn’t a flashy sacrifice — it was ambition and steel. With the position drifting toward equality, Firouzja looked to bail out with a repetition of moves. Gukesh declined the draw, kept the tension, and baited a queen trade that left him a rook-and-knight endgame where he could hoover up loose pawns. He converted, took the sole lead at 8½/13, and set up the finish. In the final round he calmly held a draw with Black against Hikaru Nakamura while his rivals could only draw too — and at 17, Gukesh became the youngest World Championship challenger ever.
It’s a perfect snapshot of his style: refuse the easy half-point, trust your calculation, and grind. See more of that DNA in Gukesh’s playing style.
2. Gukesh vs. Ding Liren — World Championship 2024, Game 3
Gukesh’s first-ever classical win in a World Championship match came in Game 3 in Singapore — and it mattered, because he had lost Game 1 and needed to answer back. With the White pieces he steered the game into a Queen’s Gambit Declined, the kind of slow, structural battle he loves.
The turning point was positional rather than tactical. Ding’s light-squared bishop wandered onto an awkward square and Gukesh hunted it down, using a well-timed central break to re-trap the piece and win material. From there his technique did the rest, and he won in 37 moves to level the match. It was the moment the chess world realized the teenager wasn’t going to be overawed by the occasion.
Curious about this opening? Read our full Queen’s Gambit guide.
3. Ding Liren vs. Gukesh — World Championship 2024, Game 14 (the title-decider)
This is the game. After 13 games the match was level at 6½–6½, meaning Game 14 on 12 December 2024 would either crown a champion or push the match to rapid tiebreaks. Ding had White and steered the game into a quiet, maneuvering middlegame — the kind of dry position that usually fizzles into a draw.
For a long time it looked exactly like that. The players reached a balanced rook endgame that engines and grandmasters alike were calling a certain draw. Then, on move 55, Ding played Rf2 — a catastrophic blunder. It allowed Gukesh to trade rooks into a king-and-pawn endgame that was simply winning: after the rooks came off, Gukesh could force the bishops off too and emerge with a decisive pawn. Ding, realizing what had happened, resigned.
The reaction told the whole story — Gukesh, normally ice-calm, broke down in tears at the board. With that win he took the match 7½–6½ and became, at 18 years old, the youngest undisputed World Chess Champion in history.
Honorable mentions: his Olympiad gold runs
Not every great Gukesh performance is a single famous game — some are whole tournaments where he was simply unstoppable. Two stand out:
- 44th Chess Olympiad, Chennai 2022. Playing on Board 1 in front of a home crowd, Gukesh posted a sensational 9/11, winning individual gold on the top board. It was the run that announced him as a genuine world-class talent, not just a promising junior.
- 45th Chess Olympiad, Budapest 2024. He led India to a team gold while going undefeated and taking board-one individual gold again. Winning the top-board medal at two different Olympiads before turning 19 is the kind of consistency that separates a champion from a one-off sensation.
We don’t reconstruct these games move-by-move here (there are many, across two events), but they’re a huge part of why 2022–2024 was such a meteoric rise — the numbers are covered in his rating history.
How to study Gukesh’s games
If you want to actually learn from these games rather than just admire them, try this:
- Play through them slowly, guessing the moves. Cover Gukesh’s moves and try to predict them — especially in the quiet, maneuvering phases, which is where his edge shows.
- Notice when he refuses to simplify. In both the Firouzja game and Game 14, the key decision was keeping the game going. Ask yourself, at each “drawish” moment, why he kept playing.
- Follow the endgames to the end. Gukesh’s wins are decided late. The habit of playing careful, precise endgames is one of the most transferable skills in all of chess.
Why these games matter
Put together, these three games are a mini-portrait of Gukesh:
- He doesn’t fold under pressure — the Firouzja game was a must-not-lose situation he turned into a must-win.
- He wins with structure and technique, not just fireworks — see the Game 3 squeeze.
- He plays for a result to the very last move — the Game 14 win came because he kept a “dead drawn” endgame alive long enough for a mistake to appear.
Want to see how he sets these positions up? Head to Gukesh’s openings, or go back to the full Gukesh Dommaraju profile.
Written and fact-checked by the Chess Lab Academy Editorial Team · Facts verified against Wikipedia, the World Championship 2024 record, his FIDE profile, and Chess.com, as of July 2026 · Last verified 2026-07-10 · How we verify content.