Having once played Gukesh, Singapore chess grandmaster Goh watches Indian battle to become youngest world champion

At the Chennai Chess Olympiad, Singapore’s first-ever Grandmaster Kevin Goh Wei Ming watched, like everybody else, in awe at D. Gukesh posting one victory after another on the top board for the India-2 team. The teenager went on to post an incredible eight wins in a row and led India to the bronze medal.

That wasn’t the first time Goh was coming across Gukesh, though. It happened around four years earlier, at the Bangkok Chess Open tournament. The Chennai lad didn’t even have a GM norm, then. (One needs three, and a certain number of points for a norm from a tournament featuring Grandmasters).

Goh flashes that smile of his – which reaches to his eyes – as he tells Sportstar about his contribution towards Gukesh’s stunning journey as the youngest challenger for the World Championship in history. He lost to the boy in the penultimate game.

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That helped Gukesh clinch his maiden GM norm. Goh then was seeking his final norm, which he would get another couple of months later.

“I remember that game vividly, and the opening was London System,” he says. “I had white, but he easily equalised in the opening. I reached some unpleasant isolated Queen’s pawn position, and he grinded, you know, the whole endgame,” Goh said.

Six years later, Goh is glad he has played a key role in bringing Gukesh to his country for the World Championship match. He is the Singapore Chess Federation’s CEO and was the man who mooted the idea of bidding for the match for which two Indian cities, Chennai and New Delhi, were also in the race.

“Being a neutral venue helped,” Goh added. “I had thought about it back in April when Gukesh won the Candidates tournament. I thought Singapore could be an ideal venue with the multiracial society we have with a lot of people of Chinese and Indian origins.”

He is delighted with the way things have gone, including the match situation (it is tied). “The response from the fans has been fantastic,” he says. “Google coming on board as the sponsor has helped, and people like the five-time World champion Vishy Anand, who is FIDE’s deputy president, have been very helpful. He is gracious when I make requests for our programmes during the match.”