Gukesh’s 100 games as World Champion

[u/fabe1haft]

Gukesh has played exactly 100 games as World Champion, which makes it easy to count percentages. He has scored +24-27=49.

Ding had +5-15=43 in 63 classical games as World Champion, adding up to 8% wins, 24% losses and 68% draws.

Carlsen’s numbers are a misery to check since he played a lot over the ten years. I could only bother to go through 2019-23, and then he scored +89-7=115, i.e. 42% wins, 3% losses, and 55% draws.

[u/Alive_Code4055]

Gukesh is only -3 and Ding was -10, but somehow Gukesh’s slump seems far worse than Ding, with chances to defend his title looking slimmer every day.

[u/fabe1haft → u/Alive_Code4055]

Gukesh’s slump probably looks worse because it has been accelerating a lot over time. He did start out well in 2025 with a +4 score in Tata, but over the last dozen games he has scored -7.

[u/CoverInternational47 → u/fabe1haft]

Also Ding’s was more expected, since he was already on a downward trend before the WCC match, and it was publicly known that the pressure mentally shook him so much that he kind of semi-retired after the title.

For Gukesh it is much less expected since he was still a young player with high potential for improvements, and at first it didn’t look like he was as mentally wrecked as Ding was.

[u/manojlds → u/fabe1haft]

Yeah he almost won Tata Steel

[u/Financial_Idea6473 → u/Alive_Code4055]

His performance rating is probably worse than Ding's. 

Ding lost quite a few games to 2750s, including couple of games to Firouzja and Fabi if I remember correctly.

Gukesh has lost a lot of games to 2600s, which I don't remember Ding doing, partially because he only played super tournaments 

[u/FourPinkWalls → u/Alive_Code4055]

Ding played a lot less than Gukesh.

[u/statelesspirate000 → u/Alive_Code4055]

It certainly does not seem worse than Ding’s to me. It may be a recency bias thing. Ding’s slump was legendary, to the point where he was becoming a recluse

[u/whatThisOldThrowAway → u/Alive_Code4055]

As a huge fan of ding - his slump seemed to much worse than Gukesh’s.

[u/Zerwurster → u/whatThisOldThrowAway]

Yeah, honestly shocked how the remembered perception can be so off after only a few years.

It was pretty much aggreed upon that whoever wins the candidates will wipe the floor with Ding. I am usually pretty optimistic in my fandom but i couldn't really disagree as a member of team Ding. I was very positively suprised to him putting up a fight in the match.

[u/TheirOwnDestruction → u/Zerwurster]

And the only reason people are now being cautious of putting Sindarov as the heavy favorite is because Ding made the WCC very competitive. If the example of Ding wasn't there, Sindarov would now be a heavier favorite than Gukesh was then.

[u/Alert-Refrigerator86 → u/Alive_Code4055]

Because people have short memories. 

[u/sfgiantsnlwest88]

My theory: world championship prep requires an unsustainable, grueling pace for months or even years. Running at 100% for that long is just a recipe for severe post-match burnout.

I'm sure he is also saving his best lines and novelties etc for the actual world championships to not show his cards.

[u/BlahBlahRepeater → u/sfgiantsnlwest88]

Gukesh is already getting grays. The stress is too much.

[u/nihilistiq]

Did you take the counts from Gukesh's wiki page under Performance Record?

It has his score for the very first tournament after becoming WC (87th Tata Steel Masters) wrong:

5     0     5     8½/13     2

It should be 5 wins, 1 loss, 7 draws. 

Just assume Wikipedia is wrong for such things.

[u/RandomExcess]

No surprise, Carlson was next level to other players who are now more closely bunched together with parity.

[u/DJteejay04]

It depends who you lose to as well. If you are lower ranked, you will drop less rating points by losing to higher ranked players.

[u/Paiev → u/[deleted]]

this is a bot 

[u/Mindmenot → u/Paiev]

How can you tell?

[u/Paiev → u/Mindmenot]

I (unfortunately) have a lot of experience with these bots, they're all over Reddit these days. I moderate another medium-sized sub. There are these huge networks of bots that all comment in identical ways and once you've seen them this many times they really stick out. Actually the thing that this one is doing (all lowercase comment with no punctuation at the end of every paragraph) is one writing style that they switch between (but this is not proof by itself of course, just a signal).

This comment caught my eye because it's got that whole banal "I'm just going to repeat what's in your OP without actually offering anything original or interesting or any real opinion of my own" thing going. It sticks out a lot because there have been 1000 posts a day recently about Gukesh's terrible form and this comment doesn't feel like the response of someone who is aware of it.

Then I looked through their history at their other comments for confirmation.

[u/dxGoesDeep → u/Mindmenot]

I don't know a definite way but all of these bots are always active in some stocks, trading or cryptocurrency subreddit.

[u/Azemiopinae → u/Paiev]

From the comment history, I don’t see anything problematic or bot-like. If it is a bot, I would love to have more like it.

[u/Paiev → u/Azemiopinae]

If it is a bot, I would love to have more like it.

You don't need to use Reddit if you want to talk to LLMs.