Ding Liren and Gukesh D play to rollercoaster draw in Game 8 of title tilt

Ding Liren and Gukesh Dommaraju played to a fifth successive draw in Wednesday’s eighth game of their $2.5m world championship showdown in Singapore, leaving the best-of-14-games match all square at 4-all after a rollercoaster contest which saw both players let winning chances slip away in the middlegame.

The 32-year-old reigning champion from China, after playing a new first move (1 c4) for the fourth time in four games with the favored white pieces, fought back from the brink of disaster by finding an incredible idea from a losing position while trailing badly on time. Helped by a Gukesh blunder, Ding played confidently and quickly to turn the tables.

But the fearless Indian challenger defended brilliantly, even rejecting a draw offer by threefold repetition to extend the contest into a fifth hour despite an inferior position before they settled for a peaceful result after 51 moves.

Ding entered the scheduled three-week match at the Equarius Hotel having gone 28 classical games without a win, a dreadful 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. But he sprang a major surprise in Game 1

by winning as black

Game 2

was a tame 23-move draw

The competition resumes on Wednesday with Gukesh playing as white in Game 9. Whoever reaches seven and a half points first will be declared the champion at Resorts World Sentosa, an island resort off Singapore’s southern coast.

Full report to follow.