Chess: USA blank Gukesh led India 5-0

The Indian chess team was blanked 0-5 by a strong USA outfit in an one-of-a-kind match named Checkmate: USA vs India early on Sunday morning.

The Indian team was headlined by reigning world champion Gukesh Dommaraju, Arjun Erigaisi, recently crowned women's world cup champion Divya Deshmukh, IM Sagar Shah and the young IM Ethan Vaz.

The USA team, meanwhile, consisted of top GMs like Hikaru Nakamura, Fabiano Caruana, streamer IM Levy Rozman, rising women's star Carissa Yip and the young IM Tani Adewumi.

India had no respite in the match as USA held a stronghold right from the very first game, where Erigaisi went down to Caruana with a partisan crowd backing the latter.

Vaz then lost his game to Adewumi, leaving Deshmukh in a must-win situation against Yip.

The recently crowned Grandmaster faltered under pressure against Yip, handing USA an unassailable 3-0 lead in the match.

Shah then played out a draw in the ten-minute game against Rozman before losing the five-minute clash as India sank further into abyss.

With just pride to play for, the reigning world champion Gukesh played out draws against Nakamura in the ten and five minutes matches respectively.

But as the time control further shortened to a one-minute bullet game, Gukesh eventually erred as India suffered a 0-5 loss.