The Week in Chess

The second game of the FIDE World Chess Championship between Ding Liren and Gukesh D was drawn in just 23 moves. “My basic idea was to play carefully, and I was fine with a draw." Ding said. The variation was a Giuoco Pianissimo and Ding tried to fix the queenside and then exploit weaknesses there. This was not the level of deep preparation we saw from, for example, Anand and Gelfand a decade ago, Ding admitted that he was on his own by move 14 and whilst I'm sure Gukesh was sweating for a while, after 20.Ne2?! (20.h4!? is maybe last chance for white to do anything) the game was just equal and a draw was the natural result.

Matches are about momentum and confidence, it has been often seen that when a player doesn't offer much pressure with the white pieces he pays for it with the black ones the following day, a kind of chess Karma. There's always a lot of overheated comment about short draws, they happen, they're part of the story of the match. It's a shame we can't have longer matches where they wouldn't matter so much, I've really never understood why, I think we're selling ourselves short, although the current 14 games is definitely better than 12. Anyhow we learned a little more about the players today and the third game is tomorrow.

I've put some brief notes together for the game, but this kind of subtle positional struggle is above my paygrade. I did include a tweet I found illuminating from Ian Nepomniachtchi.

Score Ding 1.5 - Gukesh 0.5

Game 3 Gukesh-Ding Wednesday 27th November 2024.