By: Sports DeskDecember 27, 2025 01:48 AM IST 2 min readWorld champion Gukesh Dommaraju is seen during the first day of the FIDE World Rapid Championship in Doha. (PHOTO: Lennart Ootes via FIDE)World champion Gukesh Dommaraju ground out a draw in his first game at the FIDE World Rapid Championship before winning his next four games to stay in the five-player leading pack at the end of Day 1 at Doha. Joining Gukesh in the lead with 4.5 points out of a possible 5 are Arjun Erigaisi, Magnus Carlsen, Frenchman Maxime Vachier-Lagrave and Russia’s Vladislav Artemiev.Just behind the five players with four points to their tally is a group of 15 players with four points each against their name. This includes India’s Sandip Chanda, Nihal Sarin and International Master Goutham Krishna H, besides stars like Hans Moke Niemann, Anish Giri and FIDE World Cup winner Javokhir Sindarov.The results for Gukesh from Friday evening in Doha vindicate the theory that the teenager from Chennai has improved a lot in the rapid time control. Classical chess has always been the teenager’s forte. It’s the format where he became the youngest world champion last year. But since being crowned the world champion, Gukesh has tried to play in other formats as well rather than just focussing on classical chess.ALSO READ | Meet Goutham Krishna H, an International Master from Trivandrum, who made heads turn at World Rapid and Blitz in DohaAt the SuperUnited Rapid and Blitz Croatia event in July this year, Gukesh had ended the rapid portion of the event on the top of the standings after finishing with 14 points out of 18, which was three points clear of Jan-Krzysztof Duda. However, Gukesh could not stay on top of the standings once the blitz portion of the event had begun, where Carlsen had clinched the title.Gukesh started Friday, which was Day 1 of the FIDE World Rapid Championship, with a hard-fought draw against Canada’s Shawn Rodrigue-Lemieux. But then, he rattled off victory after victory, defeating Sergey Drygalov, Nikita Petrov, Alan Pichot and Sina Movahed to rise to joint first in the standings.Saturday and Sunday will see four more rounds each of rapid chess before the © IE Online Media Services Pvt Ltd