Boris Spassky on HGH.

 The Tata Steel Masters in Wijk Aan Zee has ended, and it is time to take stock.

                                                                              Is Gukesh, Boris but on HGH?

One of the cruicial moments in the Tata Steel Masters in Wijk Aan Zee came in the penultimate round, when Gukesh struck against his compatriot Praggnanandhaa.

Here Pragg went astray with 31... Rxc3? Allowing 32. Rxe5! ... dxe5 33. Bxe5. 

White already had a winning position, and he could have avoided the drama of the play-offs if he had not carelessly allowed a repetition later. 

There is an assurance about Gukesh in attacking positions that reminds me of Garry Kasparov. You feel confident he is going to get the job done.

Most of the better younger players including Nordibrek Abdusattarov, Vincent Keymer and Pragg himself, strike me as endgame grinders. But there is something different about Gukesh and the roundness and universality of his style, which makes me think he could be a bit special. It's like Boris Spassky on HGH.

Then again it is impossible to really say which of these young stars will end up with the best career. Good young players seem to pop up everyday, that previously you had never heard of. Faustino Oro I had never heard of a few months ago. And there is Erdogmus from Turkey, who has freakishly high ratings on Chess.com and just got his second GM norm in the Jeddah young masters.

So the chess world is in a state of flux, and I wouldn't be surprised in 2-3 years to see players like Faustino already competing at the top level. You could even imagine a 14 year old or 15 year old world champion. Why not, as chess favours the young.

But if the immediate chess future doesn't proceed along these freakish lines, then I think good times are in store for Gukesh and Pragg. The real question is, which of these two good friends will go on to be the strongest?

My feeling is that Pragg is the purest talent of the two, and India seem to be betting on him to do amazing things. I feel like they rate him as their best prospect. But when you look at their classical results, you could easily argue that Gukesh is ahead. Gukesh had that amazing performance in the olympiad, while by contrast most of the belief in Pragg seems based around the fact that he got to the final of the World cup, when a lot of that success was built around beating players like Nakamura and Caruana in the rapidplay portion.

I'm still not seeing that stunning performance at classical chess from Pragg, although I'm sure it will come in time.

I also sense with Pragg that it almost seems like he's been over coached. Like he's been taught to play in a technical style, supressing his instincts. 

You feel that with a lot of players now, that they lack attacking fluency.

For example it is hard to imagine Garry Kasparov playing 15.d5? here, mistakenly closing the position. Gukesh took over the initiative with 15... Rb8, quickly got in ... b5 and Donchenko was floudering. On Garry's radar would have been the far superior 15. 0-0-0, or even just taking on c5 and playing e4.

Looking at that game I realized that there was a fluency and attacking simplicity about Kasparov that we took for granted. 

In the same round but in the challengers section, an interesting moment arose.

Kasparov would surely have gone for the jugular with 23. Bxh6! a move that is crying out to be played. It stands to reason that White would have considered this, but probably dismissed this variation due to the continuation 23... gxh6 24 Qxh6 ... Nh7! Which is indeed an obdurate defence.

But White can do better with 24 e5! leading to the following position:

24... Nd5 25 Qxh6 ... f6 is broken down by 26. Bh3!

You don't seem to see these flowing attacks anymore in top flight chess, and most of the places at the top table have been taken over by clones of Magnus. It is the hope that talents like Gukesh can turn the tide.