The Week in Chess

Ding Liren played a very quiet flank opening against Gukesh in Game 4 of the World Chess Championship in Singapore. Gukesh did admit to being somewhat surprised but he did recall seeing such a setup in the past and chose a sort of reverse London (I think the London System reminds me of some black setups so maybe this is a reverse, reverse something).

Anyhow after 12.Nd4 white had a very nice knight and a minority attack on the Queenside, not super scary but at least something. Gukesh is known for his very concrete calculative approach and 13.... Ne5! was sort of asking for f4 in the next few moves, but when is came to it f4 didn't seem very appetizing to Ding, mostly because this pawn push is surely no better than equal for white with best play and carries with it certain dangers. Ding's 16.Nf3 gave up on playing for any kind of advantage at all and if this had been a normal game we'd have been talking about the players finding a way to get to the bar as quickly as possible. Well they did the equivalent of that and swapped off most of the pieces and drew in 42 moves by repetition. As I warned after game two, I think of chess Karma after such games, if you don't put any pressure on your opponent with the white pieces, you pay for it in the next game with black. At least the London Classic starts today.

Score Ding 2 Gukesh 2

Game 5 Gukesh vs Ding Sat 30th November.