This is only a first victory. But, if there is still a long way to go before the title of world chess champion is awarded – it takes place in fourteen games – the victory of Ding Liren, Monday November 25 in Singapore, in the first part of the world chess championship chess comes at the right time: world title holder, the 32-year-old Chinese grandmaster had not won a single long game since January. To the point of not being considered a real favorite against his opponent, the young Indian (18 years old) Gukesh Dommaraju.
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Ding Liren won after a game of more than four hours and 42 moves. However, he had the black pieces, which play after the white pieces, thus leaving the initiative to his opponent.
“Of course I was nervous. It would have been surprising not to be. Once the game started I started to calm down… I think I was playing at a good level… but then I kind of panicked.”explained Gukesh Dommaraju in a press conference after the game.
The latter, 5e world player but number one among juniors, has experienced a meteoric trajectory, becoming in 2023, at only 17 years old, the youngest player to cross the 2,750 points mark, considered to be the mark of “super-grandmasters”.
Having become world champion in April 2023 against the Russian Ian Nepomniachtchi, Ding Liren then disappeared for several months. In an interview given in April to the German daily Die Tageszeitung, he explained that he had experienced depression. This year, his poor performances caused him to fall to 23e place in the ranking of the international chess federation.
The two players will face each other again on Tuesday. You must reach 7.5 points to win the world title, in the best of fourteen games.
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