“I don’t know, it’s not like there’s a huge qualitative difference. Of course, Gukesh has the more experience in terms of playing for the World Championship, that’s a wealth of experience and winning the World Championship. And he’s played more high stakes games compared to Nodirbek Abdusattorov,” Caruana said.
“But Nodirbek Abdusattorov has advantages in terms of putting pressure on his opponent. Sometimes it doesn’t work out, like today I think playing a bit too fast and maybe not so carefully, but sometimes it’s very dangerous,” continued Caruana.
“So it’s a bit of a toss-up, you know? I think for me Gukesh was a bit more of an unknown than Nodirbek Abdusattorov in some ways, like we have a lot of experience against each other, we played a match here last year, and I just decided before that if it’s between… I was sure that Nodirbek would still be there because I thought Sindarov will probably not pick his countryman.
“So I thought, okay, if it’s between Nodirbek and Hikaru, I’ll probably pick Nodirbek, between Gukesh and Nodirbek, or Gukesh and Hikaru, I’ll probably pick Gukesh in that case,” elaborated the 32-year-old.
