China’s Ding Liren is defending the world chess championship against fast-rising Indian teenager Gukesh Dommaraju over the next three weeks in Singapore. It’s the first time in the 138-year history of world championship matchplay that two men from Asia will compete for the sport’s most prestigious title.
But is that all you really need to know? What about the format, how much they’re getting paid and why the world No 1 is watching from the sidelines? Read on for all the answers …
When and where is the world chess championship?
The best-of-14-games match is scheduled to take place from 23 November to 15 December at Resorts World Sentosa, an island resort off Singapore’s southern coast. It’s only the second time a world championship match has been held in Southeast Asia and the first since 1978, when Anatoly Karpov retained his title by defeating Viktor Korchnoi in Baguio City.
Who are Ding Liren and Gukesh Dommaraju?
Ding Liren became China’s first men’s world chess champion by defeating Ian Nepomniachtchi last year on tiebreakers in Kazakhstan. Known for his solid and precise playing style based on creating small positional advantages from quiet openings, the 32-year-old from Zhejiang province is the highest-rated Chinese player of all time. A graduate of Peking University Law School, he once went unbeaten in 100 straight classical games, a record streak broken only by Magnus Carlsen in 2019.
Gukesh Dommaraju, commonly known as Gukesh D, is an 18-year-old Indian prodigy who became the third-youngest grandmaster in history at 12 years and seven months. In April, at 17, the Chennai native stunned the chess establishment by winning the eight-man Candidates tournament in Toronto to become the youngest ever challenger for the world championship, finishing top of a stacked field that included Nepomniachtchi, Hikaru Nakamura and Fabiano Caruana. An aggressive player known for using sharp, tactical openings to create complex positions aimed at unsettling opponents, he can shatter the record for youngest ever undisputed world champion held by Garry Kasparov, who was 22 when he dethroned Karpov in their 1985 rematch in Moscow.
Who is the current world No 1 in chess?
Magnus Carlsen holds the top position in Fide’s world rankings with a classical rating of 2831. The 33-year-old Norwegian has been ranked No 1 for more than 14 straight years and was considered the world’s best player even before he defeated Viswanathan Anand for the world championship in 2013.
Carlsen strengthened his claim as the greatest player of any era in 2021, when he crushed Nepomniachtchi in Dubai in the fourth defense of the title. But he decided against defending it for a fifth time in 2023, citing a lack of motivation to go through the months-long slog of preparation that world championship matches demand. It marked only the second time in the history of world title matchplay that a holder opted not to defend his crown after Bobby Fischer controversially forfeited the belt in 1975.
Instead, Ding defeated Nepomniatchi in a thrilling match for the vacant title, even if critics including Kasparov branded it an “amputated” event without the world’s best player involved. Carlsen continues to compete actively in various elite tournaments and events including a Fischer Random competition days before the world title match, also in Singapore.
Where do they rank internationally?
Gukesh is at No 5 in the most recent world rankings with a Fide rating of 2783, while Ding has plumetted to 23rd with a rating of 2728.
That not only makes Ding the lowest-ranked world champion of the Elo era (which dates back to 1971), but the lone title-holder to fall out of the top 10 during his reign.
How do they match up?
Due to their age difference, Ding and Gukesh have met only three times in classical games. Ding holds a 2½-½ edge in their head-to-head with two wins and one draw, all since January 2023. Their most recent meeting happened in January at the Tata Steel Chess Tournament in Wijk aan Zee, where Ding won playing as black.
But Ding has played only 44 classical games in the 18 months since winning the world title amid a well-documented bout with depression. Since returning from a nine-month hiatus to prioritize his mental health, Ding suffered four consecutive losses and came in dead last at the Norway Chess tournament in May, finished third from bottom at August’s Sinquefield Cup at St Louis after winning just 3½ points from nine games, then failed to win a single game at September’s Chess Olympiad in Budapest to drop out of the top 20. He enters the world title match on a 28-game winless streak in classical games dating back to January.
Most of the world’s top players have expressed great pessimism about Ding’s chances due to his sparse activity and unremarkable form. So too have the oddsmakers, who have installed him as a roughly 3-1 underdog. Carlsen says: “Obviously, Gukesh is a significant favorite, and if he strikes first he will win the match without any trouble. However, the longer it goes without a decisive game, the better it is for Ding Liren, because he has the ability but he doesn’t have the confidence.”
What’s the prize money for winning the championship?
The overall prize fund is $2.5m (£1.98m). Each player will receive $200,000 for each game won, including games won by forfeit. The remaining balance of the prize fund shall be split equally between them. If the winner is decided on tiebreakers, the champion receives $1.3m with the runner-up taking home $1.2m.
Each player received a $200,000 advance on their winnings one month before the first game that was deducted from the prize fund. The remaining balance will be remitted to the players within 14 working days after the completion of the match.
What is the schedule and how does the tournament work?
Ding and Gukesh will play up to 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 (and no further games will be played).
The time control for each game 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. 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.
If the score is equal after 14 games, a series of tiebreak games with faster time controls will be played.
The complete official regulations can be found here.
What else should we know?
• The world chess championship is typically held every two years, though this schedule has varied over time. A 1993 schism between Fide and the Professional Chess Association (PCA), a breakaway circuit formed by Kasparov and British grandmaster Nigel Short, ushered in a period where there were two competing world championship titles. The title was re-unified in 2006.
• Robert Sapolsky, a biologist and neuroscientist at Stanford University, says an elite chess player can burn up to 6,000 calories a day while playing in a tournament, three times what an average person consumes daily. Karpov infamously lost 22lbs (10kg) during his grueling world title encounter with Kasparov in 1984 before it was called off controversially after five months and 48 games due to concerns over player health.
• That Gukesh is even playing for the world title is a historic achievement. Until April, teenagers had had an indifferent record in the Candidates over the years. Only Bobby Fischer in 1959 and Carlsen in 2006, both then 16, were younger than Gukesh, and both were also-rans.
• Ding, who earned €1.1m ($1.2m) in prize money for winning the title in April 2023, joined the Shanghai-born Ju Wenjun to give China both the men’s and women’s world champions, an unthinkable outcome during the Cultural Revolution when chess was banned as an activity of the decadent West.
• There are between 1078 to 1082 atoms in the observable universe. The number of possible chess games is much higher: somewhere around 10120 different positions as calculated by the American mathematician Claude Shannon. There are roughly 85 billion different ways to play the first four moves alone. The Shannon number is at least one reason a sport that has been played for more than 1,500 years continues to arrest imaginations across all cultures with the unceasing promise of infinite potential, all within those 64 tiny squares.
