A stunning Ding Liren blunder amid mutual time pressure gifted Gukesh Dommaraju a decisive result in Sunday’s Game 11 of their world title match, leaving the Indian challenger in front on the scoreboard for the first time with a 6-5 lead and three scheduled contests remaining.
The abrupt denouement of an incredibly complicated game left the 18-year-old from Chennai within touching distance of shattering Garry Kasparov’s record as the youngest ever undisputed chess world champion.
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The players
China’s Ding Liren is defending the world chess championship against fast-rising Indian teenager Gukesh Dommaraju. The best-of-14-games match is scheduled to take place from 23 November to 15 December at Resorts World Sentosa in Singapore for an overall prize fund of $2.5m (£1.98m).
Ding became China's first men’s world chess champion by defeating Ian Nepomniachtchi last year in Kazakhstan, winning the title vacated by longtime world No 1 Magnus Carlsen of Norway. But the 32-year-old from Zhejiang province has played only 44 classical games in the 19 months since winning the world title while battling personal difficulties including depression and will go off as an underdog in his first world title defense.
Gukesh, commonly known as Gukesh D, stunned the chess establishment by winning the eight-man Candidates tournament in Toronto aged 17 to become the youngest ever challenger for the world championship, finishing top of a stacked field that included Nepomniachtchi, Hikaru Nakamura and Fabiano Caruana. The 18-year-old can shatter the record for youngest ever world champion held by Garry Kasparov, who was 22 when he dethroned Karpov in their 1985 rematch in Moscow.
The format
The match will consist of 14 classical games with each player awarded one point for a win and a half-point for a draw. Whoever reaches seven and a half points first will be declared the champion.
The time control for each game in the classical portion is 120 minutes per side for the first 40 moves, then 30 minutes for the rest of the game, with a 30-second increment per move starting with move 41.
If the score is equal after 14 games, tiebreak games with faster time controls will be played:
• A match consisting of four rapid games with 15 minutes per side and a 10-second increment starting with move 1 would be played. If a player scores 2½ points or more, he would win the championship.
• If the score is still equal, a mini-match of two rapid games would be played, with 10 minutes per side and a five-second increment starting with move 1. If a player scored 1½ points or more, he would win the championship.
• If the score is equal after the rapid portion, a mini-match of two blitz games would be played, with a time control of three minutes per side and a two-second increment starting with move 1. If a player scored 1½ points or more, he would win the championship. A drawing of lots would take place before each mini-match to decide which player plays with the white pieces.
• If the blitz mini-match are tied, a single blitz game with a time control of three minutes per side and a two-second increment starting with move 1 would be played, and the winner would win the championship. A drawing of lots would decide which player plays with the white pieces. If this game was drawn, another blitz game with reversed colors would be played with the same time control, and the winner would win the championship. This process is repeated until either player wins a game.
Players are not allowed to agree to a draw before black's 40th move. A draw claim before then is only permitted if a threefold repetition or stalemate has occurred.
The schedule
Sat 23 Nov Opening ceremony and technical meeting
Sun 24 Nov Rest day
Mon 25 Nov Game 1 (Gukesh–Ding, 0-1)
Tue 26 Nov Game 2 (Ding-Gukesh, ½-½)
Wed 27 Nov Game 3 (Gukesh-Ding, 1-0)
Thu 28 Nov Rest day
Fri 29 Nov Game 4 (Ding-Gukesh, ½-½)
Sat 30 Nov Game 5 (Gukesh-Ding, ½-½)
Sun 1 Dec Game 6 (Ding-Gukesh, ½-½)
Mon 2 Dec Rest day
Tue 3 Dec Game 7 (Gukesh-Ding, ½-½)
Wed 4 Dec Game 8 (Ding-Gukesh, ½-½)
Thu 5 Dec Game 9 (Gukesh-Ding, ½-½)
Fri 6 Dec Rest day
Sat 7 Dec Game 10 (Ding-Gukesh, ½-½)
Sun 8 Dec Game 11 (Gukesh-Ding, 1-0)
Mon 9 Dec Game 12 (Ding-Gukesh, 1-0)
Tue 10 Dec Rest Day
Wed 11 Dec Game 13 (Gukesh-Ding, ½-½)
Thu 12 Dec Game 14
Fri 13 Dec Tiebreaks (if necessary)
Sat 14 Dec Closing ceremony
All games start at 5pm local time, 2.30pm in India, 9am in London, 4am in New York.
The fireworks came early as Gukesh, playing as white, opened with 1 Kf3 while Ding responded with the ultra-committal 2...d4, the unbalanced Reti opening auguring a sharp, exciting game after Saturday’s tame draw.
“We thought we had good odds of outpreparing him, and my team did some amazing work in this line,” Gukesh said afterward. “I looked at the line, I felt it was very interesting, and the risk-reward ratio was quite nice because I would be surprising him for sure.”
The 32-year-old reigning champion from Zhejiang province spent more than 38 minutes pondering his response to 4 e3 (4...Nf6), then another 22 minutes on his fifth move (5...Bg4), falling more than an hour behind on the clock. The position after seven moves appeared to be unique in the recorded history of chess.
But Gukesh soon joined his foe under the time crunch, exhausting more than an hour on his 11th move alone. That was before the inaccuracy 15 Rd1 left him with no easy way to coordinate his queenside and facing ominous clock pressure, down to less than 25 minutes to make 25 moves before the time control. But Gukesh played with pace and accuracy from there, helped along by Ding’s inaccurate 21...Rd7.
The decisive moment came when Ding finally cracked with seven minutes left on his clock with the blunder 28…Qc8??. Gukesh spotted it almost immediately and made the correct capture (29 Qxc6), before a visibly shaken Ding offered a handshake within seconds before quickly exiting the playing hall.
Check out the final moments when @DGukesh won Game 11 against Ding Liren in the World Chess Championship! #GoGukesh pic.twitter.com/wnoP3yQtMa
— ChessBase India (@ChessbaseIndia) December 8, 2024
“It’s a very difficult game for me,” Ding said.
The result set off scenes of jubilation outside the soundproof booth and inside the nearby fan zone, where the crowds, filled with many Gukesh fans, have been largest on the weekends.
The fifth-ranked Gukesh now has the inside track on breaking the age record held by Kasparov, who was 22 when he dethroned Anatoly Karpov in their 1985 rematch in Moscow to become world champion.
Ding entered the three-week match having gone 28 classical games without a win, dropping to 23rd in the world rankings and prompted the oddsmakers to price him as a 3-1 underdog. But he sprang a major surprise in Game 1 by winning as black, dramatically ending a 10-month winless streak and delivering a riveting opening salvo.
Game 2 was a quiet draw, before Gukesh roared back with a win in Game 3. The fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth and 10th games were each draws.
The $2.5m competition resumes on Monday with Ding playing as white in Game 11. Whoever reaches seven and a half points first will be declared the champion in the world title match at Resorts World Sentosa, an island resort off Singapore’s southern coast.
If Ding is able to win one of the last three games and the score is 7-7 after 14 contests, a series of tiebreak games with faster time controls will be played. Ding faced a similar situation when he won the title last year against Russia’s Ian Nepomniachtchi, earning the match-tying victory before winning in the tiebreaker phase despite never having led once in the three-week encounter.
That history was not lost on the soft-spoken Ding as he lamented Sunday’s result before prematurely departing the press conference.
“Last year I also made a comeback in the 12th game with the white pieces,” he said. “So I will definitely try.”
