TWIC is 30. First issue 17th September 1994.
FIDE World Chess Championship 2024 (1)
Ding Liren wins game one of his title defence against Gukesh
Mark Crowther - Monday 25th November 2024
Gukesh and Ding in play during game 1. Photo © | https://worldchampionship.fide.com
Ding Liren won a nervy first game against Gukesh in the World Chess Championship held in the Resorts World Sentosa, Singapore. Ding, playing with the black pieces, tried to surprise Gukesh with the French Defence but it was he who had to spend time trying to get an acceptable position. Maybe that dominant start slightly lured Gukesh into a false sense of safety and there followed a number of inaccurate and then bad moves from him. Gukesh had one chance to get back into the game later on but time trouble and a bad position sealed his fate. This result will surely have done wonders for Ding's confidence having not won a classical game since January but both will surely hope to play better than this later in the match. Game summary and annotated PGN below.
Game 1 Summary
Ding chose the French Defence with the intention of surprising Gukesh but initially it clearly didn't phase him as he kept blasting out his moves including the novelty 10.g4, this last move he probably should have thought about a bit as this definitely upped the stakes for both sides.
There's always a danger of annotating to the result of a game, at this point it looked like Ding was nervous and vulnerable and Gukesh powerful and confident but this was not really what was going on. Ding was fighting hard to achieve a playable position, which he did and Gukesh having played his opening theory struggled to get into the right frame of mind, and a couple of his following moves were a bit lax.
After 18...Nb2 Gukesh started to struggle, 20.Rac1? 21.f5? and 22.Qe1? were all bad moves and not surprisingly left him on the brink of defeat. Ding played quickly and confidently but maybe 23...Rc4 should have been replaced by 23...0-0 and 27...fxe6? (27...Bxe6) was a move that should have left the result open to question. 30.Qc2? was the decisive error (30.Bc5! Qxg5 31.Rf3! (not the spectacular 31.Qxh7 because of Qd4+) would have led to a very messy position) after which Gukesh was reduced to near paralysis. After a final try of 42.Be6+ was met by the correct 42...Kh8 (42....Kh7 43.Qxe4!=) Gukesh chose to resign. Gukesh only made time control on move 40 by one second, Ding had a couple of minutes to make his final move.
This was an interesting fight but not a terribly good game with far too many inaccuracies from both sides. The fact that Ding hadn't won a classical game of chess since beating Max Warmerdam on January 27th at Wijk aan Zee this year was clearly preying on his mind, he won't have to worry about that anymore. It was also notable that Ding didn't leave the board at all until after first time control, an entire four hour session. After the game Gukesh admitted to nerves, which is no surprise at all, he probably won't be phased by this loss. Will we see the French again, I'm not sure, Ding I think implied it was a one shot deal, maybe he said too much at the press conference, who knows?
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