With one push of a pawn, Ding Liren signalled that he was aching for a fight. Winning a game in a world championship battle can do wonderful things for your psyche. But winning one with black pieces in the first game of the world championship is almost an elixir.
Before Monday’s game 1 win over Gukesh, Ding’s last win in the classical format had come in January at the Tata Steel Masters tournament. He had gone winless in 28 games. In the 304 days since he beat Dutch GM Max Warmerdam in Wijk aan Zee on January 27 and his win over Gukesh in game 1 at Singapore, the world had written Ding off. His body language was dissected. Players who had played against him spoke of how physiologically shaky he seemed on the board. He himself spoke candidly of his fear of “losing too badly” to his teenage challenger.
Then came the miracle of Game 1.
On Tuesday, buoyed by the heady victory of Monday, Ding reached into his bag of tricks and pulled out a new one on the first move. Playing with white, he pushed his pawn to e4. It’s the most common first move in chess with white. Viswanathan Anand calls it his insignia in the sport, to the point that when presented with a chess board, he usually autographs the e4 square. Bobby Fischer, who almost exclusively played this opening move in his career, called 1.e4 as the ‘best by test’.
But Ding has never been a 1.e4 player.
“1.e4 was the first mini surprise. In the past Ding has relied almost exclusively on 1.d4 or 1.c4. I believe he’s never played e4 in a World Championship match. He’s played it occasionally in other tournaments. But generally he sticks to d4 or c4,” explained world no 2 Hikaru Nakamura on his YouTube recap of the game.
But Ding wasn’t going to play conventional chess after forcing a win in Game 1. On Monday as well, he’d sprung the uncommon French Defence with black.
“In the first game I tried something new. That required a lot of memorizing. Today also, I played an uncommon move (1.e4). I prepared a lot for that,” Ding admitted.
Ding’s preparation was aimed not just to surprise Gukesh with his first opening move but to catch him off guard with a lesser known line early on.
In complete contrast to Game 1, the second game saw Ding build up a handsome lead on the clock in the early exchanges. And unlike the first game, where Ding had spent 245 minutes rooted to his chair in the middle of the playing hall, he retreated into his private lounge by the 8th move as his opponent hunched over the board.
With his 9th move Ding progressed his a pawn to a5, an unusual move that even the computer said was not in its top three recommendations. It was a puzzling move, but one that prevented Gukesh pushing his pawns on a and b file. But as Gukesh mulled his next move, commentators on the FIDE broadcast pointed out how an anonymous online account had tried to play this strange and rare line just on Monday night on a cloud database. It brought back memories of the 2023 World Chess Championship, where a lot of Ding Liren’s preparations had been discovered online after he had played a rare line in a game that had also been played by an anonymous account on an online database.
By the 12th move, Gukesh was down by 30 minutes. He eventually opted for a queen exchange. The evaluation bar gave a slight advantage to Ding at this point.
“For me at least, it’s hard to get away from the feeling that Ding Liren won the opening battle (in Game 2). This is a dream advantage in the World Chess Championship. It’s not much, but it’s all Ding’s. Gukesh is not playing for much, yet. You really need some mistake on Ding’s part for black to play for something. Whereas for black it can get unpleasant quite easily,” said Viswanathan Anand on the official broadcast.
But, such is the calculating nous of the 18-year-old that by the 20th move, Gukesh had managed to defend stoutly and bring calm to the chaos. Both players started to hop their knights around to get a draw by threefold repetition. It was a logical conclusion. Ding didn’t want to overextend and find his advantage from Game 1 wither away. Gukesh did not want to take another full-blooded punch on his visage.
“I was surprised in the opening, but I reacted pretty decently. I didn’t give him any serious chances. It was a solid game with black, which is nice,” said Gukesh. “A draw with black pieces in a World Chess Championship is always nice.”
The third game of the world championship will be played on Wednesday with Gukesh returning with white pieces.
“There will be a big fight in Game 3, because he is down a point and he’s playing with white pieces,” said Ding. “I’m ready for a fight.”
