World Chess Championship: Ding undone by Gukesh and clock as challenger strikes back

The 18-year-old Indian plays near-perfect chess to pull level 1.5-1.5 in the best-of-14 game match, times his first win in classical chess against the Chinese to perfection; the defending champion succumbs to time pressure in Game 3

Precision is one of D. Gukesh’s strengths. He has this exceptional ability to calculate his moves almost perfectly.

Daniil Dubov, former World rapid chess champion who was a second to Magnus Carlsen for two World title matches, had praised that aspect of Gukesh’s chess in an interview with The Hindu in Kolkata a fortnight ago. The Russian Grandmaster said that at his best, Gukesh played chess like an engine (computer).

This was one of those days Gukesh would have wanted to play like that. And he did, in the third game of the World championship against Ding Liren.

He was trailing by a point with the first rest day of the match coming up. And he needed to win a game in the World championship, especially after a disastrous start, losing the first game with white pieces. He also needed to beat Ding in classical chess: he hadn’t been able to do that in their five previous meetings before.

Many more games are still to be played in this match, but the 18-year-old would remember the game on Wednesday at Resorts World Sentosa fondly. His 37-move win has brought the scores level in the best-of-14 match — 1.5-1.5.

Technically, Ding may have lost on time, as he failed to complete his moves in the stipulated time. But it was actually a game won by Gukesh with a nigh impeccable show.

He opened with the Queen’s Pawn and it soon became obvious that he had prepared for the opening, and had surprised Ding. The game mirrored the one played between Vladimir Kramnik and Arjun Erigaisi at the World rapid team championship last year until the 13th move. Ding didn’t seem to remember that game, and he fell behind his rival considerably in time.

At one stage, the defending champion was down by about an hour. But, a rare inaccuracy by Gukesh, when he pushed his ‘g’ pawn to the fifth rank on the 15th, allowed Ding to breathe easy and he even managed to improve his position a bit.

The Chennai lad, however, soon was back to his accurate best. He won Ding’s bishop for a couple of pawns, and came up with one best move after another.

Ding had gone into extreme time pressure: there was a time when he was required to make eight moves in a minute and 49 seconds, that too in an inferior position. That was going to be a tall order.

So it proved.

Published - November 27, 2024 06:42 pm IST