Ding Liren and Gukesh D play to seventh straight draw in taut world title clash

Ding Liren and Gukesh Dommaraju played to a seventh straight draw in their world championship match on Saturday after 2hr 35min, leaving the $2.5m contest deadlocked at 5-5 with five games to go.

The 32-year-old reigning champion from China repeated his opening choice from Game 6 with the London System, marking only the third time it’s been played in the 138-year history of world championship matchplay.

But it quickly petered out to a balanced game and a flurry of material exchanges before the peaceful result was triggered by a threefold repetition after 36 moves.

“There’s no so much room to make mistakes, every lose will result in very bad situation,” Ding said. “We need to be careful with every move.”

Ding entered the scheduled three-week match having gone 28 classical games without a win, dropping to 23rd in the world rankings and prompted the oddsmakers to price him as roughly a 3-1 underdog. But he sprang a major surprise in Game 1

by winning as black

Game 2

was a 23-move draw

The fifth-ranked Gukesh, an 18-year-old native of Chennai, is bidding to 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 competition resumes on Sunday with Gukesh playing as white in Game 11. Whoever reaches seven and a half points first will be declared the champion in the world title match at Resorts World Sentosa, an island resort off Singapore’s southern coast.

Full report to follow.