Bengaluru: Ding Liren arrived for Game 4 of the World Championship on Friday with a simple plan – play a solid, positional game with White and wait for errors and overeagerness from his teenaged opponent. The errors never came, Gukesh played solidly, White’s positional advantage was miniscule and the game eventually petered out into a draw.
The match in Singapore stands at 2-2 with 10 classical games to go. The player who reaches 7.5 points first will be declared champion.
Gukesh will be glad with how he’s handled the match and its attendant pressures so far – with calm and spades of pragmatism.
Ding’s seconds, Hungary’s Richard Rapport and fellow Chinese Ni Hua, rode down the elevator with him and were spotted alongside the world champion publicly before a game in this match for the first time. Rapport, in his bright floral-printed shorts, held up a double-fisted thumbs up at Ding as the reigning world champion disappeared behind a door, towards the playing arena.
Seconds are essentially team members who help players with preparation and look for ideas. Gukesh hasn’t revealed his extended team, other than his regular trainer Grzegorz Gajewski who is in Singapore. In an AI-powered age, where information is on overdrive and everyone has access to similar tools, being able to surprise your opponent, get them out of book, and lead them into unfamiliar terrain, is what players are often looking for.
In the current match format, players have 2 hours for 40 moves with no increment. So, if you end up burning through your clock, it could prove to be costly. It’s already happened twice in this match.
Ding, expectedly, switched up his opening, and chose to kick things off with 1. Nf3 (a departure from 1.d4 in Game 2) and then trotted out the interesting idea of 5. Ba3 – where he placed his dark-squared bishop on the a3 square, with the plan to trade off Black’s good bishop and make Black’s development more long drawn.
The idea was seen as far back as 1962 Curacao Candidates game when Tigran Petrosian successfully tried the Ba3 idea against Mikhail Tal.
Calling Ding’s opening line “a bit of a surprise”, Gukesh said: “I think I reacted well enough. At some point, I felt like he had maybe a slight edge, but I quickly neutralised it.”
Ding, on his part said that he had the buffer of a rest day to recover from the Game 3 loss and was in a “very good mood” on Friday. “I chose this opening idea to try to surprise my opponent. It worked well, not so bad. The positional advantage was very small.”
Gukesh spent some time as the opening moves unfolded and responded to the surprises with restraint. Interestingly, after spending three games and 117 minutes immobile, Black’s b-pawn was brought into the game for the first time in this match. Gukesh didn’t crack despite the surprises, a couple of attempts at provocation and was in no real danger. Ding’s retreating knight move (16…Nf3) was an early indication that he was ready to split points.
Ding later revealed that he could have played on but the possible risks for White in exploring ideas with only a tiny advantage didn’t seem worth the while – “I wanted to play safe.” The position liquidated into an equal rook endgame and the players agreed to a draw after 42 moves.
Gukesh will play with White in Game 5 on Saturday. Both his White games have been decisive so far. His strategy in this match has been to go for ambitious play and press for a win with White and remain solid with Black. Ding has three wins with Black over Gukesh (including one in this match) and one gruelling loss in Game 3.
When asked which player from the past he’d like to play against, Gukesh unsurprisingly chose the troubled genius and eleventh world champion, Bobby Fischer. He was then thrown a query about numerology and whether, like Garry Kasparov—born on April 13 and later becoming the 13th world champion—he sees numbers aligning for him too (he’s 18, and should he win, he would become the 18th world champion).
He didn’t miss a beat: “I believe in Fischer’s quote… just try to make good moves.”
