Bengaluru: What we have after seven draws on the trot is a match that’s down to just four classical games with the possibility of a tie-break looming.
Easily the top contender for the most disappointing draw of the match, Game 10 had little happening over the board. The life had gone out of the position long before a three-fold repetition was agreed upon by Ding Liren and Gukesh after 36 moves. The match is poised at 5-5 and there’s no telling where it goes from here.
If the scores remain tied at the end of Game 14, the match will head into a tie-break – four rapid games of 15 minutes each with a 10-second increment per move. Should the scores still remain even, the match will be decided in a blitz playoff.
The theory of Ding wanting to steer the match into tie-breaks appears more plausible with every draw that he seems eager to make. The match is now down to just four classical games. Gukesh will have the White pieces in two of the remaining games. Looking at how the match has played out so far, it’s unlikely that Ding will want anything but quiet draws in any of his White games. It will rest on Gukesh to create imbalances, take risks and try to go for a win with White. It could very well happen in Game 11 on Sunday, or Game 13 on Tuesday, when Gukesh will have the White pieces.
“The cost of one game is higher than it was maybe at the start or a few games before,” Gukesh said when asked if he thought the cost of every move and game is higher at this point since the match is nearing its end. “My approach is still the same – to play good games. If you think about it, it’s not that different because even though the cost of losing the first game, for example, is not that high, I still would not want to lose that game.”
“There is not much room to make mistakes,” was Ding’s response. “Every loss will result in a very bad situation so you have to be careful with every move.”
Gukesh was asked if he routinely checks the engine analysis with his father Rajini Kanth during their short car ride from the playing arena to the press conference room since “he’s the first chess player” he talks to after every game. “The game I was winning with Black, I was also losing at some point. He told me during our car ride that I could have lost a piece in that crazy game. Usually we don’t go into details… He will be happy to hear that he is a chess player,” Gukesh smiled.
In Game 10, Ding stuck to his plan of playing rock solid with the White pieces and staying away from anything chaotic by a country mile. The reigning world champion had a risk-free position with a small edge on Saturday but he chose to pull the plug on the game pretty early.
It’s hard to say what course the match will take from here. Ding will want to shut down the classical games and take the fight to tie-breaks while Gukesh is likely to push for the match to be decided in the classical phase. We could perhaps see a few opening novelties from him in his White games, perhaps one of them in 1.d4. The Indian can be a bit shaky in time scrambles and hasn’t had as much success in the shorter time controls.
Ding famously won his world title in the rapid tie-breaks last year, and at his peak, in 2019, crushed Magnus Carlsen in the Sinquefield Cup playoff. Will Gukesh go all-in to stay out of tie-breaks?
“Gukesh has been running the whole show (in this match) alone for a long time already,” Dutch GM Anish Giri said on the chess24 broadcast. “Ding is ready to make a draw in a better position for many days already and Gukesh has been dominating psychologically, is more confident and the bigger fighter. All that is fine, but the bigger question is can he win the match and how? That is the challenge.”
