The Week in Chess

18 year old Gukesh Dommaraju became the youngest World Champion after defeating Ding Liren in the 14th and final game of the World Championship in Singapore. Just as we were preparing for a rapid tie-break on Friday Gukesh was the recipient of a gift of a whole point in the final game when a draw should have been well within Ding's capabilities. Ding only has himself to blame as he didn't even have be in a drawish endgame as awkward as this.

Ding tried 1.Nf3 and 2.g3 and Gukesh surprised him with a very rare variation. The game followed the course of many others where the positions were a bit murky and hard to judge, even if there wasn't much in them. 19.Bxd4 would have been much better than 19.cxb5?! and after 25...b4 black had full equality. 26.a4 was in my view very much too cooperative, its idea was to trade into an inferior but drawn endgame like in game 13. But there was always going to be much more suffering involved today. The Russians always talk about having a "two result position" where you can play for a win without ever having to worry about defeat and this is what Ding signed up for the wrong side of. What he overlooked in the end was shocking in its triviality. He agreed to swap rooks apparently without noting that black would also be able to force the bishops off too and have a winning king and pawn endgame. It apparently took quite some time for Ding to realise what he had done, Gukesh obviously realised first and he was clearly very shocked. The drawing margin for error was still huge when the error happened.

How can one explain such a blunder? Two days of defending bad endgames? Already thinking about the tie-breaks? Just the stress and strain of these matches? Possibly some if not all of these.

All things considered Ding gave a pretty good account of himself in the match as a whole but is clearly a pale shadow of his former self. I really hope he can put this game and indeed the last years behind him and resume a normal chess career. I thought before and during this match it had come a year too early for Gukesh. He now has the title, will have learned a lot from this and will continue to mature, both with chess experience but also physically. Gukesh's future is not yet set, a long champion like Kasparov and Carlsen? Or a one term like Ding? With his chess clearly not yet in its final form, nobody can guess. This was a decent, if not classic, match which told us quite a lot about where classical chess is in 2024. Players are looking to get their opponents into unfamiliar positions, there was none of the 30 move deep opening prep we saw a decade and more ago. We have a worthy champion, what will he do with the title? Like it or not the World Champion is looked to as a leader of the game, and Ding did not choose to fulfill that role, this is likely to change.

Final score: Gukesh 7.5-6.5 Ding Liren