The first game of the World Chess Championship was eagerly awaited, as it had to answer all the questions about Ding Liren’s form and his state of mind for the match, as well as D. Gukesh’s strategy.
The challenger faced a minor surprise in Ding’s choice of the French defence, but nonetheless sprung a surprise of his own. He was even slightly better at the end of the early opening.
Tough choices
However, a few moves later, Gukesh found himself in a situation where he had to choose between two fairly equivalent moves. On the 18th move, he chose to capture with his knight, when many people already felt that capturing with the bishop would have been more prudent. His move wasn’t objectively bad, and it showed his aggressive intentions, but it would require him to defend very precisely.
Ding put pressure with the next few moves, and as inevitably happens, Gukesh went wrong on the 21st move, after which he never fully got back into the game. Ding had the luxury to play simple moves leaving the difficult choices to Gukesh. By the 30th move, the game was over, but I thought both players had something positive to take away. Gukesh showed originality and creativity, while Ding managed to exploit the smallest chance and win very efficiently. For Ding, the confidence boost from winning one of the few games this year must have also been huge.
Bouncing back
In the second game, Ding was clever to play what seemed a very harmless sideline. Leaving aside the slight opportunity missed on the 14th move, he didn’t have any real chances to put pressure on Gukesh. He acquiesced to the draw in a position where he could still have played on a little bit more.
In Game 3, Gukesh came up with a very modern plan starting with an early exchange on the fourth move and then a king-side advance with g4 five moves later. Though he spent 33 minutes for his 13th move, Ding did really well to regroup his pieces. But he slipped up with his rook on the 18th move, and Gukesh started to play excellently and was close to winning after his fine knight move on the 23rd move.
Gukesh calculated everything perfectly and the position collapsed for Ding, who was under extreme time pressure, too. It was a fantastic game in which Gukesh showed his incredible calculating abilities.
The match is interestingly poised now with the pendulum swinging towards the Indian as we go to the first rest day.