The Week in Chess

The FIDE World Chess Championship match between defending champion Ding Liren and Gukesh D is tied at 4-4 after 8 games. Neither player seemed particularly disappointed as they drew a very difficult game where the engines showed that both players had a winning positions at different moments.

Ding is jumping around from opening to opening so that he is a moving target, a strategy of opening surprises which in itself is not a surprise. Today Gukesh thanked his seconds as he got in a novelty first with 7...f6 after Ding chose the English. What happened is that the game took on a fairly unique direction, Ding had a Rook exposed in the middle of board, there was a very unusual pawn structure. All this meant the players had a little difficulty working out what was going on, and this seemed to get harder as the game progressed. 22.Rb1 seemed the start of Ding's trouble and he felt he had to give up his a-pawn leaving Gukesh with passed a and b pawns which other things being equal should be decisive. There were some pins to sort out however and the computer suggested 26...Ndc5 as the winning move, Gukesh thought the move was weird looking and seemed a bit unconvinced even at the press conference. After 28.Qe1! (missed by Gukesh) Be6? is was Ding that was winning according to the engines, not that he was totally convinced either, 31.Ne1 was supposed to be best, 31.Nd4 was more natural and even after 32.Nc6 Gukesh wasn't sure he was even worse and turned down a later draw by repetition (after the game he said he could now see he was worse). Soon the game did end in a draw by repetition.

Score Ding 4 Gukesh 4

Game 9 Gukesh vs Ding 5th Dec 2024.