Another thrilling contest at the most critical time; with three games remaining, the Champion Ding needed to at least win once and had two opportunities with the White pieces to do so.

After reaching a perfectly equal opening tableau, a most innocuous-looking positional slip foreshadowed a deeper positional deficiency in Gukesh’s handling of the position–his dark-squared bishop is best returned to its original square where it does not interfere with its fellow pieces and functions perfectly fine.    This came to light with a blunder on move 16 that led to a strong advantage for Ding which he confidently converted to victory, ending with a flourish that forced resignation in the face of checkmate.

This spectacular clash featured world-class preparation and skillful, combative play providing all manner of complexity:  characteristics that makes chess beautiful if useless.

From the outset White challenges Black’s preparation of little-explored territory, and while a technical advantage did not come of it the demands it made of Black created the conditions of the time scramble where Gukesh’s accuracy triumphed over Ding’s imprecision.

Gukesh came with a prepared and atypical opening that caused Ding to take enormous amounts of time early.  Gukesh in turn took a full hour to find his 13th move, and the position became quite complex and demanding of precision.

After Black’s 13th both players had to adjust to a much more restrictive approach to time management, and in such a complicated position the conditions were ripe to test the excellence of the talent at the board.  After precision mixed with mild inaccuracies, Ding failed to find the necessary defensive move on move 26 and followed it with a game-losing blunder that gave Gukesh a victory which further is considered a miniature as it lasted less than 30 moves.

Enjoy the interactive game viewer below, no chess knowledge required.

In a terrible day for chesslovers young and old, Ding made no move that took advantage of White’s primacy due to the advantage of the first move.   A fully-equal endgame was reached and after barely using half their time the players repeated the position.  This was a non-event marketed as a world-class sporting competition.

Perhaps Ding, knowing that Gukesh’s rating in Rapid and Blitz is far lower than at the much slower Classical time control, is content to draw the remaining games with the intent of keeping the Classical Championship by triumphing at shorter time control.  This was explicitly–and in my view, cynically–done by Carlsen years ago.

Games like this one are a stain on the sport.   People pay good money to go and see the contests for the World Championship–as a child, Gukesh saw for himself Anand-Carlsen ten years ago in Chennai and it’s part of his motivation.

Enjoy the interactive game viewer below, no chess knowledge required.

In by far the least combative game thus far, both Champion and Challenger elected to go do well-worn territory.  Once the few queenside complications came to a close moves were made without much import.

Enjoy the interactive game viewer below, no chess knowledge required.

Ding made a series of mistakes that led to Gukesh forming quite the threat with his queenside pawns.  A massive change of fortune came when Black failed to push his outside pawn leading to a White advantage that in turn dissipated right after the first time control was met.

Enjoy the interactive game viewer below, no chess knowledge required.

As this game features an enormous change of fortune after move 28, I recommend hitting the F key to flip the orientation of the board.

Once Ding snatched a pawn in time trouble it seemed Gukesh would be able to turn the battle in his favor.  Two slips after the first time control was made undone such plans.