World Chess Championship: Ding Liren outplays D Gukesh in Game 1

Indian Grandmaster Dommaraju Gukesh went down to China’s Ding Liren in the first game of the 2024 World Chess Championship match in Singapore on Monday. The win enabled Liren to take a 1-0 lead over Gukesh in the 14-game series. Gukesh was playing with white pieces whereas Liren played with black pieces.

Liren had come into this match on the back of a poor form, with his last win in classical chess format coming in January 2024 during te Tata Steel Masters tournament. He had defeated Dutch Grandmaster Max Warmerdam in Wijk aan Zee, Netherlands. Gukesh began the match by moving up his king pawn forward.

As it happened | D Gukesh vs Ding Liren, World Chess Championship Game 1  

That move meant that Gukesh was taking a more aggressive approach, but as a result, Ding Liren responded with the French Defence. The opening move from Gukesh was similar to the one that was used by the legendary Viswanathan Anand who used it in the first game of the 2011 World Chess Championship match against Spain’s Alexei Shirov.

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Liren, who seemed to be struggling initially, took a considerable amount of time to make his moves at first but began making moves within seconds as the game progressed. Gukesh had an advantage of 30 minutes by the 12th move of the game.

By the 20th move, however, Liren held the upper hand after he got two extra minutes on the clock. Liren even led a counterattack with his queen against Gukesh. Later, however, Gukesh took a defensive approach with 30 minutes left on the clock to complete his first 40 moves. Gukesh moved his rook to d3, which led to Ding bringing forward his queen, thus giving himself an advantage. Gukesh had less than a minute to make his last seven moves, and was already staring at defeat when the Indian made his 40th move.

What was crucial for Liren in the first game was that he recovered from a slow start and paved way for a good middle game. From then on, it was Ding all the way as Gukesh seemed to struggle with his moves before surrendering to the Chinese.

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Liren is the defending champion of the World Chess Championship after he had defeated Ian Nepomniachtchi in the 2023 edition. Gukesh, on the other hand, qualified for the match after winning the 2024 Candidates tournament in Toronto. The second game of the 2024 Chess World Championship will be held on Tuesday, 26 November.