World champion Ding Liren and world champion challenger Gukesh D talk after their match ended in a draw at the Sinquefield Cup in St Louis. (PHOTO: Lennart Ootes via Grand Chess Tour)
In a game that was a trailer for the World Chess Championship battles that will follow in November-December this year, reigning world champion Ding Liren and his teenaged challenger from India, D Gukesh, played out a draw in the first round of the Sinquefield Cup in St Louis.
This was the first time that Gukesh and Ding met in a classical contest after the teenager secured his position as the Challenger to the World Champion’s crown. It’s also likely to be the last time the duo meet in battle over the classical format before the World Chess Championship. The Indian prodigy and Ding have previously met only twice in classical contests: on both occasions, coincidentally at the Tata Steel Masters in Wijk aan Zee, Ding had prevailed with white pieces.
Gukesh is currently the world number six while Ding has dropped to his lowest ranking since 2016 at number 15. In fact, Gukesh only went past Ding in May this year.
Despite a few nail-biting moments, Gukesh managed to cling on. His king almost stepped on a banana peel after a pawn push to the d4 square in his 18th move. But Ding could not punish him.
Gukesh had spent almost 22 minutes hunched over the board contemplating his move before he nudged his pawn forward to d4.
If India’s D Gukesh manages to beat Ding Liren at the World Chess Championship, he will become the youngest world champion in history. (Express Photo by Partha Paul)
The evaluation bar immediately shot upwards, indicating that the Chinese world champion had the upper hand.
If only he could find the one-two punch combination needed to knock out Gukesh. In the live analysis of the game, grandmaster Peter Svidler, who is also Praggnanandhaa’s trainer, laid out the way Ding could put Gukesh’s king — who was cooling his heels on the g8 square guarded by a posse of pawns on the seventh rank — under severe duress. It was simple. Push the queen to the h6 square, and when Gukesh inevitably brings out his pawn on the g file a square ahead, Ding could simply slide his rook in three easy moves to the h file, thereby making his queen even more lethal.
“The d4 played here by Gukesh, seemingly indicating that he’s entirely unafraid of queen to h6. I don’t think he’s right about it,” said Svidler in his analysis from the studio.
He went on to suggest that Ding bring his rook in three moves to the h4 square.
“Every move now, Gukesh will have to be very certain that rook h4 doesn’t happen,” he went on to add. “This is a very surprising decision. This is a big opportunity for Ding. And it’s surprising that he hasn’t played queen h6 yet.”
So comfortable was Ding’s position on the board at this stage, that he even allowed his hands a break from gripping his face. But his next moves arrived almost 30 minutes later. While he did move his queen to h6, his next move — bishop d3 — handed back the advantage that he had gained.
The next six moves by each of the players saw plenty of pieces being forcibly evicted from the board. Ding’s king and Gukesh’s queen found themselves doing a socially-distanced dance, shuffling one square this way and then the other way as the game ended in a draw.
“I wanted to surprise him in the opening. But at the same time save my preparations,” Ding confessed to Cristian Chirila after the game as he broke into a wide smile. “I’m playing better now than I was at the beginning of this year. I played many training games with my seconds. Although I lost many of them, I learnt a lot from my losses.”
