Traps, Tricks & Mistakes: Houdini Escape
From November, 25 to December 13, took place in Singapore the World Championship match between Ding Liren and Gukesh Dommaraju. The match consisted of 14 classical games plus rapid tie-breaks in case of a level score after the classical phase.
Before the match, the majority of the chess community predicted a clear victory for Gukesh. But surprisingly Ding won the first game. Gukesh won the third game and then followed a streak of seven draws before Gukesh won the 11th game. Ding reacted winning the 12th game. Game 13th was a draw again. And in the latter stages of game 14th, when commentators were already talking of tiebreaks, Ding made an unfortunately blunder immediately capitalized by Gukesh who won the game and the match. Especially dramatic was game 7th where Gukesh had his opponent on the ropes for many moves. But the win slipped through his fingers after an inaccurate 45th move that allowed Ding to draw the game.
The game started with 1.Nf3 (the Reti opening). That move surprised Ding who took some seconds even before writing down his opponent’s move on the scoresheet. Then a new surprise came on move 7.Re1 which plunged Ding in deep thought for 28 minutes. The shock of Gukesh’s move was general among commentators and even Carlsen called it a: “tremendous surprise found by the Gukesh camp… because you don’t see these completely new ideas that often, even in a world championship match.” According to Carlsen the benefit of that move is that presents the opponent with many options, the consequences of which are difficult to assess. As a result, the player spends many minutes on evaluation.
Gukesh played quickly and confidently the next moves, while Ding invested several minutes in each of his responses.
The game became more and more dangerous for Ding who found himself in trouble after Gukesh’s 20.Be3 threatening his queen. Ding admitted: “I thought my position was hopeless!” He was unsure about where to move his queen, placing it finally on a6, and later even capturing his opponent’s a2-pawn.
Anish Giri correctly understood Ding’s mood commenting: “Ding thought he was busted, plus no time, so now he is just grabbing some pawn out of desperation, to at least have something”
After taking the a2-pawn, Ding’s queen inside Gukesh’s camp looked weird and almost trapped. Gukesh plunged here in deep thought for 21 minutes and found 26.Ra5 which seemed to give him chances to win the game and lead the match.
With control approaching and suffering time trouble, Ding desperately wanted to trade queens and relieve the pressure on his position. After exchanging queens and bishops, an endgame emerged where Ding had 8 minutes for the remaining 8 moves, against Gukesh’s 14 minutes. The position was still tricky but part of Gukesh’s advantage had diminished. As Gukesh confessed in the press conference: “I thought this endgame with this f5-weakness and a pawn up should be winning, but probably it was more difficult than I had expected”
It looked as Ding had saved the game. But then players came to the critical moment of the 40th move for completing the time control. After a thought of 2,5 minutes, Ding played 40…Ke5 with 7 seconds to spare. Suddenly, the advantage was again on Gukesh’s side.
From move 40th, the new time control consisted of 30 minutes plus increments of 30 seconds to complete the game. After only 4 moves in this phase, the drama came again. Ding spent 20 minutes in his 44th move. He commented: “I nearly gave up when I saw 44.Ke1, because I don’t know how to create counterplay” However, in a turn of events, his opponent, trying to take advantage of Ding’s time trouble, quickly played a couple of inaccuracies and after 46.Bd1 it was clear that the game finally was heading to a draw.
Game 7 was the most thrilling of the match in Singapore with Ding’s escape in Houdini style.
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