Gukesh was shocked that his opponent actually did that at the end!

Welcome everyone to the game of India versus England at the 7th round of the Chess Olympiad 2026. We have Grandmaster Daniel Howard Fernandez from England taking on the world champion Domaraju Gukesh as he enters in. Gukesh has had a pretty fine tournament until now. He's played all the games, 5 wins, 4 wins, 2 draws, 5 points out of 6, and there he enters in. Shakes hands with his opponent and puts his lucky jacket on the chair. Gukesh is playing against Daniel, who was originally from Singapore and has now decided to represent England. And you can see Gukesh closing his eyes there, focusing in, and Daniel gets ready. Gukesh has the white pieces, and as always, India would be hoping for a full point from his end. He opens the game with pawn to e4, and Daniel decides to maybe play— ooh, e6! He goes for the French Defense. This will be very exciting to see how Gukesh deals with this. d4 played by Gukesh, and Daniel goes d5. Now e5 would lead to advanced variation, and Gukesh plays it. Pawn to e5. c5 played, immediately striking at the base of the pawn chain. c3 reinforcing the pawn chain, and And now knight to c6, putting pressure on the d4 pawn. Knight comes out to f3, and Daniel plays bishop to d7. This is one way to play. The other way is queen b6, which is a main move. And now Gukesh simply gets his bishop out to e2. A very simple way to play. You want to castle out And then figure what next to do. And knight g7. Well, you don't want to be trying to win this pawn because knight g6 hits here as well as here. So he plays castles. And now one of the main ways to play here is knight to f5 to put more pressure on the d4 pawn. But Daniel plays knight g6. An interesting move, looking at the f4 and e5 squares. Bishop comes out to e3. Gukesh overprotects the d4 pawn, and bishop e7 played. White goes knight to d2, finishing the development here. And black most likely will castle. Both sides have finished development. White has more space. Black is looking to count for counterplay. And Gukesh goes pawn to g3. With this move, he takes control of the f4 square, but he does weaken some of the light squares around the king. Pawn takes pawn, and you want to take back with the pawn. For black, it does make sense to break with f6. Now where else would the counterplay come from? So he does play f6, and there's so much pressure on the e5 pawn that you have to take on f6. So Gukesh tremendously focused there, and he takes bishop— pawn takes f6. Bishop takes f6. Rook comes to c1, is putting pressure on the c-file, and Daniel now goes Knight e7. He sees that now there is a real possibility to put massive pressure on the d4 pawn, and so he moves his knight back to e7. Knight goes to b3, eyeing the c5 square, attacking b7, d7, and e6. And Daniel plays b6. It's turned into a battle where both sides are trying to stop each other's plans. b6 stops knight c5, and the bishop comes out to d3. Okay, slowly improving his position. The bishop looks nice here, but the knight on f3 looks a bit loose. And h6 played here. Every move weakens something or the other. The light squares are a bit weak, and can we go bishop b1 and queen d3? That could be an idea, but Gukesh first goes Re1, a useful move to put the rook on the semi-open e-file. And now a5, a3, bishop goes back to e8, and the knight comes back to d2. He plays his bishop to h5. Maybe a better move was knight to f5 because, you know, Gukesh's last move was prepared against bishop h5. Now the knight is defended. So he quickly moves his queen away and attacks the rook on c6— uh, the knight on c6. He comes back, bishop to e8, but in doing so, now bishop b5. White is getting some initiative, and Gukesh does play it. Bishop to b5. There are a lot of weaknesses in black's camp as well, and you have to be careful here. He goes knight a7. Offering a trade. Takes it. Queen takes, very likely. On a bright note for black, you've gotten rid of your bad bishop. And I think Gukesh mustn't trade queens. Queen to b3, he plays it. He understands that keeping the queens is important. He puts pressure on b6 And also this diagonal. Pawn to b5 played. Well, this move does weaken the c5 square now, and Gukesh first sets his eyes on the e5 square and the e-file. So plays his bishop to f4, a lovely move, getting the bishop here. The knight is jumping in. Knight to f5, some pressure on the d4 pawn. But you can simply go queen d3 defending, and that's what he does. He defends d4. Rook to c8 played. I think the best way to continue is take, take, and knight b3, and that would give a nice position. Or maybe start with g4, but he went bishop e5. Bishop to d8, avoiding the trade. And now taking here, taking here, and knight b3 seems like the way to go. He does take, knight takes. By the way, a very crazy move is also g4, but okay, he first should go knight b3. Plays it. The a5 pawn isn't hanging, but you want to play your knight to c5. And black goes bishop to b6, putting pressure on the d4 point. We have knight jumping into c5. And knight a7. The knight defends this and is getting ready to go to c6. There is a tactic here that Gukesh can try. Take, take, take, attacks this and the rook, but he decides against it. Comes back bishop f4, and now bishop takes c5, d takes c5. Keep an eye on the time. Gukesh has 5 minutes, Daniel has 4 minutes. They have to make 10 more moves to reach move 40. ओह नाइटी फाइव, but that is not a great idea. King g two calmly trying to improve the position would have been better, but now knight e five b four played pushing forward. It takes on c six queen takes c six. And now the c5 pawn is under pressure. Gukesh does take on b4. a takes b4 taken. And what a fight back here by Daniel. Now rook c1, a move that Gukesh would not be too happy playing. Yes, he has a passer But d4, excellent move. The queen opens up. Now knight h4 idea takes. I'll take your bishop. He goes rook e1. He gives up this. If you take queen c5, rook takes e6 is coming. So he goes knight h4. I love this move. There's a mate in one threatened. There's also knight f3 coming in. He plays rook e4 stopping that. But now queen takes c5 should work. He goes e5. Very interesting move because if you take bishop e5, there's knight f3 check, and then you know this is hanging. Then knight d2 if you go king f1. Crazy stuff. So g takes h4, he takes on f4, and Gukesh takes the pawn. He's now a pawn up, but look at his king, it's exposed, and Daniel has his chances now.

Check.

Move 38, Gukesh goes King f1. Move 39, and f3 very quickly played. King e1, 40th move, the last move, the best move, and the only move to keep the balance is Rook c8. Very tough to find when you have just 1 minute. He goes King h8, and suddenly on 40th move, Gukesh is better. The best move for Gukesh is King d2. King d2, King c2, King b3. Keep the king safe, push the c pawn, win the game. That should be the idea. He finds King d2 and Queen a6 played. To get in here, but this is already defended. So Rook e7 to threaten mate in one is a great move. He does play Rook e7. Rook to g8 played. And now h5, fixing the pawns. Gukesh is doing this in style. Daniel goes back, queen c8. Very important now for Gukesh to take care of his king. King c2, king b3 is one idea that has been floating around. But he goes queen e5. And in doing so, he gives a small little check here. To the king. If it's possible, Daniel should play it. He thinks there. Key moment of the game. And he plays rook to g. He plays queen d eight. Ah, he plays queen d eight check. Now only move for Gukesh to keep the advantage is King c2, but he goes Queen d6, and this allows Daniel the much-needed counterplay with Queen a5. b3 threatened, it's a winning move in the position for Black. I mean, not winning, but draw, and draw is like a win here for Daniel, he finds Queen a5. Good move. One of the threats now is b3 check to activate the queen. So Gukesh goes King e3. He's moving his king forward, but Queen a1 is a strong move. But he goes Queen a2. He misses it. Queen a1 had an added advantage of going from the back. Queen e1 check. Now Rook e6 with the idea of Rook takes h6 and mate is the best move here, but it's so difficult to find. Maybe Rook e6. He goes Queen e5. He defends b2. He attacks g7, puts pressure. And Daniel now thinking hard. He goes Queen b3, which is fine, but now Gukesh can get King f4 to g3. Yes, he plays his king to f4, a good move. Queen c2. And the king can drop back to g3. Well, the best move here was queen c4 check, and if king g3, queen f1, and he keeps getting the counterplay that he needs. But he goes queen c2, and now king g3 played by Gukesh, threatening rook e8 to trade the rooks. And the c pawn is very strong. Daniel starts to think and he resigns. And Gukesh is stunned. He's like, what? Isn't that very soon, the resignation? And he's looking at his opponent like, why did you resign? We still can play on. But I think it's the right call. Let's say, for example, queen d1 defends here. You simply go rook e8 check. In earlier lines, rook f8 was always coming as a threat. But here you can simply start running with your king. And so that's the reason why a draw was agreed— a win was given to Gukesh, resignation by Daniel Howard. And there were many, many possibilities for him to equalize, but it was tough under the given circumstances. And with this win Gukesh gives India the victory over England because Prag had won on board 1, Arjun had drawn on board 2, and on board number 4 we have Gukesh winning here. So 2.5 out of 4. Uh, Nihal did lose his game later to Luke McShane, but that didn't change the match result. So kudos to Gukesh for the win. And Daniel Howard Fernandez, well, he's still Sitting there, bit confused, like, you know, what went wrong. Maybe he could have improved something somewhere, but it was not to be. Gukesh starts setting back the pieces. He is now on 6 out of 7 in this tournament, gaining close to 10 Elo points. He's getting back to where he belongs. And this actually is great news for Indian team as well as for all the fans of Gukesh who are rooting for him in his World Championship match with Sindarov. For now, this is Sagar Shah signing off. We'll leave you with some moments in the venue with Gukesh to see how the fans interact with him after the game.

Thank you. One minute, please. One. Thank you very much. Thank you. May I have one picture? Thank you. Can I take a— have some video of that? Thank you. You have very good dance skill. Thank you.

Can I take a photo with my son? Thank you.

Sorry, can I one photo please? Thank you. Hi, you. Thank you very much. Thank you. So this— are you happy converting this position? Because it was seeming very complicated.

Yo, Aksu. Yes?

I mean it, boss. You think they get my job? Oh yeah, a couple months. Yeah, don't steal my spotlight, please. Mr. Zach, world champion. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Thank you.

Kitesh, how happy are you with this comeback win for the team?

Kitesh, Kitesh, Kitesh, Kitesh.

Okay, it's okay, it's okay. Yeah, yeah, sorry. Block me. Can I take a photo with you? Wait, wait, there's stairs. Careful, careful, careful. There's stairs, please. Thank you, thank you very much. Yeah, I'm happy. Yeah, thank you. But was it looking complicated? Are you confident that you can convert it? I thought it was. It's not maybe very easy, but my opponent just resigned. Ah, oh, okay.

But probably I can see that.

And how do you feel about Nihal's court? Fair chances, but not fully sure.

Okay, okay.

See you. Thank you, Gokesh.