World Chess Championship: All of it comes right down to the ultimate day after Recreation 13 ends in draw

Gukesh, left, and Ding Liren in the course of the thirteenth recreation of the FIDE World Chess Championship 2024 in Singapore on December 11, 2024. Photograph: FIDE through PTI 

If Ding Liren wanted some background music on the World chess championship, a tune in Tamil — one of many official languages right here in Singapore — can be a prime contender: Anuradha Sriram’s Karuppu thaan enakku pidicha colouru (The color I like is black).

However for a blip in Recreation 11, through which he misplaced with black items, Ding has been very good with the color normally much less favoured in chess. A draw with black items is taken into account worthier than with white. It’s virtually priceless when you might do it within the penultimate spherical of a keenly-fought, nonetheless tied World championship.

So with only one recreation remaining within the classical format, the match is tied 6.5-6.5 at World Resorts Sentosa. The state of affairs is easy after Recreation 13 led to a draw.

On Thursday, the winner of Recreation 14 will change into the World champion. If it’s a draw, the tie-breaks of pace chess might be performed on the next day.

On Wednesday, when he had lower than 5 minutes to make 10 strikes, Ding discovered the one one that might salvage his place. He needed to transfer his rook to the ‘f8’sq.. Every other transfer would have led to a probably devastating defeat at such a stage of the match with only one recreation remaining.

So, he discovered 31…Rf8.

Not for the primary time, Ding’s inside Houdini made an look. His defence has been top-notch right here.

Ding is the defending champion in additional methods than one. After he discovered the proper defence, he was in a position to full the 40 strikes within the first time management.

He has struggled to do this for a lot of the match. It was no completely different in Recreation 13.

And Gukesh had give you a gap shock even earlier than the opening. He arrived on the venue sooner than Ding, who had joked earlier about having to attend for his rival to reach day by day.

He opened by pushing his King’s pawn by two squares (1. e4), one thing he had performed within the first recreation, which he had misplaced. As was the case in that recreation, Ding replied with French Defence.

Gukesh received a chance to place Ding in serious trouble after the latter erred along with his queen on the thirtieth transfer. However the Chennai teenager missed the essential rook alternate, after which Ding got here up with that game-saving transfer along with his rook.

It was going to be a draw from then on. And it was, after 68 strikes, with a rook-and-pawn ending.