Another tight draw as Ding Liren and Gukesh D battle for world chess title

Ding Liren and Gukesh Dommaraju played to a third successive draw in the sixth game of their world championship showdown on Sunday in Singapore, as the Indian teenager fought back from a questionable decision to decline a draw despite an inferior position to negotiate a bloodless result after 46 moves over more than four hours.

Ding, the 32-year-old champion from China, played a new first move (1 d4) for the third time in three games with the favored white pieces, opting for the en vogue London System and creating structural imbalances early by doubling black’s pawns on the c-file. It was the same opening he deployed

in Game 6 of his world title match

Both players signaled their deep preparation by blitzing out their moves well into a fiery middlegame, where Gukesh had gained material but was forced to deal with Ding’s centralized pieces and potential counterplay.

As the game progressed, white’s attempts to press with open lines were neutralized by Gukesh’s accurate defense. The 18-year-old declined a draw offer by refusing a threefold repetition with 26...Qh4!?, instead of taking a draw by repetition with Qe7!, drawing audible gasps from the gallery assembled outside the sound-proof playing hall.

“I just thought I always have counterplay and I saw no reason to take a draw now,” Gukesh said. “I wanted to make a few more moves and see what happened.”

But with time pressure mounting for both players, Ding seemingly gave up his advantage with a queen exchange (34.Qc2!?). The position simplified into a rook endgame, with neither player able to find a breakthrough before concluded with a series of repetitions after 4hr 15min.

Ding came into the first defense of his world championship having gone 28 classical games without a win, a wretched run of form that saw him drop to 23rd in the world rankings and prompted the oddsmakers to install him as roughly a 3-1 longshot in the match.

But he sprang a major surprise in Monday’s first game

by winning as black

The fifth-ranked Gukesh, already the youngest ever world title challenger, can shatter the record for youngest ever undisputed world champion held by Garry Kasparov, who was 22 when he dethroned Anatoly Karpov in their 1985 rematch in Moscow.

The overall score in their $2.5m showdown at Resorts World Sentosa is 3-3 ahead of Monday’s rest day. Whoever reaches seven and a half points first will be declared the champion in the scheduled three-week contest at Resorts World Sentosa, an island resort off Singapore’s southern coast.