Shock Ding Liren blunder in Game 11 leaves Gukesh D on verge of world title

A stunning Ding Liren blunder under time pressure gifted Gukesh Dommaraju a decisive result in Sunday’s Game 11 of their world title match, leaving the Indian challenger on the brink of history with a 6-5 lead and three contests remaining.

The fireworks came early as Gukesh, playing as white, opened with 1 Kf3 while Ding responded with the ultra-committal 2...d4, the unbalanced Reti opening auguring a sharp, exciting game

after Saturday’s tame draw

“We thought we had good odds of outpreparing him, and my team did some amazing work in this line,” Gukesh said. “I looked at the line, I felt it was very interesting, and the risk-reward ratio was quite nice because I would surprising him for sure.”

The 32-year-old reigning champion from Zhejiang province spent more than 38 minutes pondering his response to 4 e3 (4...Nf6), then another 22 minutes on his fifth move (5...Bg4), falling more than an hour behind on the clock. The position after seven moves appeared to be unique in the recorded history of chess.

But Gukesh soon joined his foe under time pressure, exhausting more than an hour on his 11th move. That was before the inaccuracy 15 Rd1 left him with no easy way to coordinate his queenside and facing an ominous time crunch, down to less than 25 minutes to make 25 moves before the time control. But Gukesh played with pace and accuracy from there, aided by Ding’s inaccurate 21...Rd7.

The decisive moment came when Ding finally crack on his 28th move with seven minutes left on his clock with the blunder 28...Qc8??. Gukesh spotted it almost immediately, made the correct capture (29 Qxc6), before Ding resigned within seconds and quickly exited the playing hall.

“It’s a very difficult game for me,” Ding said.

The result

set off scenes of jubilation

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.

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 quiet draw

The competition resumes on Monday with Ding 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.

If Ding is able to win one of the last three scheduled games and the score is 7-7 after 14 contests, a series of tiebreak games with faster time controls will be played. Ding

faced a similar situation

That history was not lost on Ding as he lamented Sunday’s result before prematurely departing the press conference.

“Last year I also made a comeback in the 12th game with the white pieces,” he said. “So I will definitely try.”