An eight-man security cordon surrounds world champion De Jokic as he exits the playing hall at the Goa Rio resort on Saturday evening. Typically, the job of these burly men in neon jackets bearing the word “Security” is to escort the 19-year-old in front of a hundred fans to the hotel elevator. Today, they don’t need to bother. After being eliminated from the FIDE World Cup with a 55-move defeat to Frederik Svane, the teenager had a ‘Do Not Disturb’ written across his face that would have stopped even the most adventurous selfie seekers dead in their tracks. The Chennai teenager raced past the fans in less than a minute, a remarkable speed considering it usually takes him at least 10 minutes to navigate the crowd of fans queuing outside the playing hall shouting ‘Gokesh sir’.
Gokish’s year of misfortune, since he became world champion in December last year, continued at the FIDE World Cup, where he was knocked out in the third round by Svane, the German grandmaster who trails him by 123 points in the ELO rating. Thus Svane became the latest arrival to Mikhail Chigorin’s club. The Chigorin Club is named after Russian chess player Mikhail Chigorin and lists the men who defeated world champions in classical games during their reign. Last year, the men’s ranks at Mikhail Chigorin’s club swelled, as Gokish suffered several defeats.
Frederic Svane 🇩🇪 amazes the world champion! Gukesh D 🇮🇳 out of the FIDE World Cup! #FIDEWorldCup pic.twitter.com/OvCJFdOoik
– International Chess Federation (@FIDE_chess) November 8, 2025
For Sven, this was the biggest achievement of his career. “I have never faced such a strong opponent before,” Svane said on Saturday. “The win over Gokish was special.”
After the first match between Jokic and Svane ended in a draw on Friday, the German faced a major problem in the second match. He was only 10 minutes old with 21 moves on the scoresheet, meaning he needed to make 19 more moves in 10 minutes. In fact, he played move 37 (37…g4) with only one second remaining. But despite his problems with the clock, it was his rival who quit after 55 moves.
Gokesh’s struggles against Svane began on move 39, when he turned his rook to the right (39.Re1), which the engine flagged as a foul. Svane continued to increase his advantage on the board by a few fractions before a blunder with his king during move 51 from Gukesh (51.Kd3) more or less handed the game to Svane.
“I didn’t expect to win this game,” Svan admitted. “But when I got the knight endgame, it was very easy for me to play.”
Gokesh’s struggles against Svane began on move 39, when he turned his rook to the right (39.Re1), which the engine flagged as a foul.
While Jokish was eliminated, the other two seeds, Arjun Erejesi and R Prajanananda, secured a place in the fourth round, as did Harikrishna Pantala and Pranav V. Meanwhile, Vidit Gujrathi, Karthik Venkataraman and Narayanan S will compete in the tie-breakers on Sunday.
Is there cause for concern?
Despite his poor results in 2025, Jokic played relentlessly. In fact, for a home tournament, he arrived in Goa just days before his first match, suffering from jet lag and physical exhaustion while playing in an exhibition event in the USA.
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Meanwhile, Gokic’s camp views the year as a “transitional year” as he pursues new goals after fulfilling his childhood dream of becoming a world champion at the age of 18.
“It’s very typical of anyone who works all his life to achieve something and then finally achieves it (at 18). It puts you in a difficult position. You have to come up with new goals, new ways to motivate yourself. It’s a transitional period for him. We must not forget that he is very young and the competition is very strong. It’s not, you know, that by winning the title, he has a monopoly on winning all the matches. He’s got a monopoly on winning all the matches. He’s got a lot of money,” Grzegorz Gajewski, Jokic’s second player since 2023, told The Indian Express in an interview. On Friday when the world champion was playing in the first match against Svane (which ended in a draw): “It is a very competitive sport and everyone else is working hard to beat him.”
Gajewski noted that one of the reasons behind Jokic’s losing streak in 2025 is the fact that people were not taking any risks against him.
“It’s definitely true that opponents are playing different against him now than they did (before he became world champion). I wouldn’t say they’re targeting him. I would say he has more respect than them. They’re playing more responsibly. When he was younger and lower ranked, chances kept coming because the higher-ranked players were willing to take risks. Now I don’t think there’s a player willing to take risks against Jokic. So sometimes he’s the one who has to take risks. And of course sometimes he does.”
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(tags for translation)Gokis
