Chess World Championship: Killer instinct missing

Gukesh D surprises reigning world champion Ding Liren in the opening moves. He gains a winning position but squanders it. Gukesh doesn’t accept a draw and chooses a risky line to try to win but fails to go for the kill. This pattern, seen in almost all of the first seven games of the ongoing World Chess Championship in Singapore, repeated itself in Game 8. Yet again, the Indian teenaged challenger to the world title could not deliver the final blow.

Playing with the Black pieces, he surprised Ding on the board and the chess world off the board with another novelty inside 10 moves. Once again, he avoided desperate draw attempts by his opponent but still could not win. After Game 8, the scores are tied at 4 points each. It seems Gukesh will have to bring out some ‘Brahmastra’ to break the armour of Ding, who continues to hold his fort.

The match heads to a nail-biting finish, and many live commentators confessed they are going to have a heart attack as the tension on the board becomes unbearable with every game and every move.

The players threw several chess principles away in the game. If controlling the four central squares is the soul of chess strategy, both players tossed it aside. And that is not the only basic chess principle they broke. Gukesh captured flank pawns away from the centre while Ding didn’t even move his pawns to the centre of the board for a long time. At one point, his rook somehow reached the central squares in front of the pawns. It looked ugly, and chess coaches would surely cringe at the moves. The rook protects the pawns from behind and could be trapped in the centre. But the Indian Grandmaster could not capitalise on it. At one point, he gave away the advantage to such a degree that he could have lost the game.

Ding, who has remained under pressure in the openings and middle game, chuckled in the post-match conference. “Today, during the game, I didn’t realise I was winning at some point,” he said.

The most surprising move was No. 7 by Gukesh, when he moved his ‘f’ pawn to the sixth square. This is considered a sin as it opens a castling wall for the opponent to raid and kill. A post on X by chess website Lichess.org highlights how unusual the move is: “Only 1 (!) out of over 6,000,000,000 rated games ever played on Lichess had the same position after this move.” Another website, chess24.com, said this move was not in the top 15 chess engine (computer) moves suggested in the said position.

Ding opened with the English Opening (1.c4), for the first time in the championship match. Gukesh responded with 1.e4 to put up counterplay and was soon rushing through his moves, showing how well-prepared he was. Ding somehow kept finding defensive moves, even earning a compliment from the challenger, “I missed Qe1 (a move that saved the game). It was actually very impressive that my opponent found this move so quickly,” he said.

On earning another applause from the viewers at the match venue for not settling for a draw and putting himself in danger, Gukesh said, “The position where I didn’t repeat (moves repeated thrice result in a draw), I didn’t think I was much in danger. It was just a misjudgement of the position.”

Ding has survived for another day, taking the tension and pressure in his stride. “It seems recently every time I play a match, no matter online or over-the-board… it was a very tense match, so it was in my expectations,” he said.

Gukesh took a moment in the conference to thank his seconds and his larger team for their preparation. He also mentioned the contribution of his parents, who accompanied him to the venue. Ding smiled when asked about his parents. “She (my mother) wakes me up, and she provides food for me, so she’s doing her job,” he said.