The video provides a live, move‑by‑move commentary of Dommaraju Gukesh’s fourth‑board game against Italy’s Sabino Brunello in Round 3 of the 2026 Chess Olympiad. It opens with a vivid pre‑game scene of Gukesh entering the hall, wearing his championship jacket, and highlights the significance of the match for Team India. The commentator walks through the opening – a Queen’s Indian Defense – noting Gukesh’s atypical move order (b6 instead of the usual e6) and the strategic ideas behind each side’s piece placement. The narrative then follows a series of sharp tactical skirmishes: knight jumps, bishop sacrifices, and a critical sequence where Gukesh exploits a mis‑step (Knight e3) with a forced combination that wins material and creates a decisive attack. The climax features Gukesh’s powerful rook lift (Rook e5) and a queen‑side infiltration that forces a check‑mate or decisive material gain, culminating in a clean victory. Post‑game, the commentator reflects on Gukesh’s form, his 2.5/3 score, the rating gap (≈150 points), and the importance of this win for India’s Olympiad campaign, while also mentioning a fan‑zone interaction where Gukesh claims he memorised the whole game without a scoresheet. The summary captures the full arc: setting, opening theory, tactical climax, and broader implications for Gukesh’s resurgence.
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It's time for us to follow the game of the world champion Domaraju Gukesh as he makes his way to the playing hall. It's always quite busy at the Chess Olympiad as Gukesh and Prag both enter in. India is taking on Italy in the 3rd round of the Chess Olympiad 2026, and there you see Gukesh entering in. He is playing On the 4th board. So he goes there, puts his famous jacket there. This is the jacket with which he won the Candidates, the World Championship match. And Gukesh takes his chair, writing down the score sheet. His opponent is Sabino Brunello, a strong player from Italy rated 2536, and Gukesh will have a stiff task against him. Playing with the black pieces, never easy. The players are ready, a handshake here, and the clocks have begun. This, dear friends, is the binary recap of the day. Check out the link in the pinned comment. Brunello opens the game with pawn to d4. And Gukesh plays his knight out to f6. We have pawn to c4, and in this direction, Gukesh's repertoire has been quite narrow. He usually goes e6. He doesn't play g6 here or any other move. So it's possible to prepare knight to f3. And now once again, d5 has been Gukesh's move of choice. But this time he changes it. He goes b6. The Queen's Indian is a more fighting opening than the Queen's Gambit Declined. g3, and now you can put your bishop on b7 or bishop on a6. Gukesh plays bishop to a6, attacking the pawn on c4. And Gukesh faced exactly this opening in the first round with the white pieces. At that time, Gukesh, instead of knight d2, had gone for the move b3. c5 played, striking in the center, and now the main move is e4. But Sabino goes bishop to g2, pressurizing the rook. Knight comes out to c6, pressure on the d4 pawn. And dxc5, slightly committal decision here to say that, okay, I'm going to take here. And Gukesh takes back with the pawn so that he can build a very strong center with d5 coming up. b3 played to get the bishop on this long diagonal. White will have 2 amazing bishops then. And Gukesh goes Be7, finishing his development. Wanting to castle short. Bishop comes out, and now simply short castles for black. There is a chance to play something like Ne5 in such a position to take advantage of this diagonal, but Sabino goes castles, which is a fine move. Now strikes in the center with d5. His dream would be to play d4 and e5 when black would be better clearly. And so pawn takes pawn is taken and e takes d5. Now black has the hanging pawns in the center, but it seems playable. Rook to c1, very logical. At some point, you are threatening to take, take, and rook c5. Maybe directly is also a good idea. And so Gukesh goes rook e8, a very subtle move. If you take, I take, and if you take on c5, e2 is hanging. So he goes rook e1. He defends the pawn on e2, and now really threatening to take. And so a simple move, bishop to f8, so that the bishop defends the pawn and the queen can take on f6 if you take there. Now it's all about how well can you actually manage these pawns. They are your strength, but they can also become weaknesses. Ng5, a very creative move by Sabino. He opens up the bishop. Gukesh kicks the knight. And here's the point that he wants. He wants to go knight h3 to f4, which is the reason why he played this in the first place. Knight h3 played, and now let's see what Gukesh does. Normal moves like rook c8, but g5. I love this move. Excellent move, grabbing space. The knight goes back to f1. And now the knight cannot come out, you know, it's kind of locked in on h3. Rook to c8 defending the knight on c6. And notice that take, take, and taking here would actually not be great. It gives too much activity to black, so f4 played here. Now the idea is to strike the structure. Gukesh can maybe close it down with g4, but knight e4 played. And this is wild now. This position is getting very intense. Knight to e4 takes. Because look at this bishop's diagonal. Look at the kingside being weak. And the pawn on g5 could be a weakness, but for now limiting the knight in a big way. Knight comes to e3, that's a mistake. The best move was knight d2 and white was doing fine, but knight e3 allows a tactic now for Gukesh, and the tactic is knight takes g3, hitting the knight. Of course, Gukesh sees this, but after knight d5, he doesn't go for this because knight e2, king h1. He has to find bishop g7, very tough move, the only move there. And so he plays knight d4 instead of taking on g3. And actually, this gives Sabino a small chance in the game. He must find knight g4. If he finds this, his position is tenable. But he goes knight c2, and look at the bar drop there considerably, because now this passive move is giving Gukesh a huge chance. His best move is bishop g7. It's all about evaluation. More than the move itself, and he finds it. Excellent chess there by Gukesh. The reason why black is completely winning is this complete activity of his pieces— knight, bishops. Meanwhile, the white pieces have simply become too passive. cd4 taken. He takes on c8. Queen takes e8. Now eyeing here on h3, and he takes on d4. Now notice, if you would have taken here, this is already knight trap, so that doesn't work. So he takes bishop d4, and now Gukesh finds the best move, knight c3. Excellent move, hitting the knight, threatening the e2 pawn. You have to take. So he takes back. Bishop c3. And bishop c3. Now the problem is e1 rook is hanging. If it moves, e2 pawn is hanging. And if you find time to take here, then rook e5 is a very powerful move that wins the game. He goes Queen c1 with the same idea of taking on g5. And now Rook to e5, beautiful move by Gukesh, defending, also attacking the rook. And Gukesh feels confident, he's getting up from his chair. Sabino goes Rook f1, hoping for some play down the f-file. Not to be. Bishop takes e2, excellent chess here by Gukesh. Hitting the rook. Rook to f2 played. Now some pins are here. Let's see what he does. Bishop g4. Oh, nice move, defending the queen, threatening bishop d4. h3 knight is hanging. Too many things going here. He comes back, rook f1. And now he takes the knight on h3. Gukesh has seen the finish. Bishop takes h3 and check. If king h1, queen h3 seals the day. So king g2 is the only move. And now an important variation. Rook e2 check, king f3, and rook f2 check, so that if rook takes, you lose the queen here. He finds it, and this is a beautiful move. Rook f2. Sabino decides to go back. King h1, and now Gokesh chops off the bishop, threatening a mate here. Takes the pawn. And bishop drops back. He gives another check, and king at seven. No more checks here. Gukesh has beaten Sabino Brunello with a beautiful game of chess here, and I think it was excellently done. There's a beautiful play by the world champion. I think one of those games where you can see Gukesh in full flow after a long time. Yes, his opponent was almost 150 rating points rated below him, and we would love to see Gukesh playing like this against stronger opponents. But this was a great game, and it is great news for Team India that he is finding his form in this tournament. He is on 2.5 out of 3 points right now, and Gukesh and Sabino will analyze later. There's an entire video on ChessBase India on these moments after they play each other, and we would highly recommend you to check it out. But for now, what we'll do is we'll keep those moments here where Gukesh analyzes with Sabino, then goes into the fan zone, meets the fans, um, and all of this in a fast-forward mode. And Gukesh says, I, I don't need the score sheet actually. I have the entire game in my head, and I hope you enjoyed the recap, and see you soon.
