Five-time world champion Viswanathan Anand turned 55 on Wednesday and his protege D Gukesh had the chance to give a befitting present to the legend while getting within touching distance of becoming the youngest-ever occupier of the throne.
Having lost Game 12 to Ding Liren on Monday immediately after taking the lead, Gukesh ideally needed to make the most of his last game with white pieces if he wanted to settle the contest before the tie-breaks. As it turned out, the Indian’s efforts to squeeze water out of stone only resulted in a stalemate after 68 moves. The Chinese champion now has white pieces in the final game of classical chess and if it too ends in a draw, the two combatants will go into tie-breakers playing formats with quicker time control.
It is said that chess legend Garry Kasparov received a call from one of his mentors, Mikhail Tal, the night before he became world champion. The latter, who had worn the crown previously, had said: “Tomorrow is my birthday. And I expect a good present.”
One doesn’t know if Anand had made a similar demand to Gukesh on Tuesday night. But the intensity with which the 18-year-old power-walked his way into the playing arena on Wednesday for Game 13, it would appear that he desperately wanted a win. Gukesh, after all, is looking to better Kasparov as the youngest chess world champion in history.
INTERACTIVE: Game 13 between Gukesh and Ding Liren
You can check out the move by move action from Game 13 between Gukesh and Ding Liren and also play along in the interactive below..
Gukesh was the first one in the arena, almost charging into the ‘fishtank’, armed with another opening surprise that his team had cooked up.
“I came for a fight today. I was feeling fresh and confident,” Gukesh said later.
Game 13 followed the same circadian rhythm of most of the earlier ones, in which the Indian was better prepared in the opening phase which would force Ding to burn up time on the clock.
On Wednesday, Ding spent 17 minutes on his 7th move, and then 37 minutes on his 8th after Gukesh played 8.Be3.
By the time the game ambled into the middle game, Gukesh had saved up almost 55 minutes more on the clock than his opponent. But then, as has been the template in the previous games in Singapore, as time trouble started to loom over Ding, he sped up, finding accurate moves.
It must be noted that Ding lost Game 3 due to time. And he has found himself scrambling to make moves in most games of the ongoing world championship just to go past the 40th move milestone which sees players get a bonus of 30 minutes. But whenever Ding has been in trouble on the clock against the Indian, he seems to play the best moves while Gukesh seems to loosen his grip on the game by not matching the world champion’s level of accuracy.
Same old story
Wednesday provided another example. On his 31st move, Gukesh had the chance to really apply the pressure on his opponent. He had two choices: capturing Ding’s rook on the back rank with his own rook and then mobilising his knight which was on the c3 outpost, or moving his knight immediately. The Indian spent all of 34 seconds on his decision, and chose the wrong move.
He hopped his knight (playing 31.Ne4 rather than 31.Rxe8+), which proved to be a mistake. The e4 square at that stage was a particularly lethal springboard for the knight to be on, because one move later, it would jump on d6, from where it would have a surplus of major pieces to kill.
Even when Gukesh played 31.Ne4, there was trouble in the air for Ding. He had just under eight minutes to make 10 moves.
Ding noticed it immediately, as he planted both his hands on the back of his head in dismay. For a few minutes, he actually looked aghast because he saw the storm clouds gathering.
“When I saw that move, I almost gave up. I didn’t find any move to survive, to stay in the game! But in the end, I found a nice resource!” Ding admitted at the press conference.
The “nice resource” he spoke of was the only accurate move that he could have played to get out of jail (31…Rf8).
If those two moves had been played differently by either player, the fate of Game 13 and the world championship could have been different.
“I didn’t see rook to f8 (the move Ding used to escape out of trouble). When he was thinking about his move, that’s when I spotted rook to f8,” admitted Gukesh.
He later said that he was aware of the engine evaluation that if he had delayed the knight’s move by one turn, he would have a winning advantage on the board.
“It was an unpleasant surprise,” Gukesh shrugged.
The prospect of tie-breakers deciding the fate of the 2024 World Chess Championship now appears to be very realistic with both players level on 6.5 points and the world champion having white pieces.
“This is as close as the match can get. I’m quite excited. Of course, it’s an important game (Game 14 tomorrow), and I will try to do my best,” said Gukesh. “It’s fitting that the match has gone into the final round.”
