Ding with the Upper Hand as the First Game of the 2024 Chess World Championship Unfolds
Today, November 25th marks a big day in chess history. The first game of the 2024 Fide World Chess Championship kicked off with its first game. You can watch this suspenseful tournament between Gukesh Dommaraju (IND) and Ding Liren (CHN) on Chess TV at 3:00 am EST - 9:00 am EST.
Today, Ding and Gukesh played the first of 14 games that decide who is the Chess World Champion. The first to 7.5 pts wins the title as well as a grand prize of $2,500,000. Here is how the game went.
The Game started out as a French Defense: Normal Variation, just as any game started out.
Gukesh took an early lead pushing his pawns into Ding's side of the board in an aggressive nature pushing the black knight off of the f6 square. This gives Gukesh good central board control as well as a good tempo against Ding. The Evaluation bar also favor's Gukesh by 0.4 at this point in the game.
The game went on with normal pawn pushes supporting the center, it seems like a comfortable position for both players.
But around the 10th move things started to go wrong for Gukesh,
Ding develops a good attack on the queen side. He has a solid pawn rush attack as well as the queen station on a good square, protecting the c5 pawn as well as putting pressure on the c3 pawn for it is pinned to white's king.
The game continues with Ding putting pressure on Gukesh's queen side. Both players are in a comfortable position, Gukesh evades Ding's attack from earlier. It seems like a normal Chess position with little to no action.
Gukesh had the upper hand in the beginning of the game, but on move 18 came Ding's unforgiving attack. The formidable Knight to b2, this move had a key role in Ding slowly collapsing Gukesh's position.
After Nb2, Rc1 (Defending the c3 pawn) came Qc4! Ding looking for a slow but dangerous attack. He seeks to dig his forces deep into the opposition territory and slowly eat away from behind. Ding offer's a queen trade but Gukesh denies and plays Qd1? which turned out to be a big mistake! Gukesh no longer had control of the key c1 - h6 diognal which made way for Ding to play the crushing Bg5! After this line Gukesh was now losing, with the evaluation bar now favoring black by 1.7.
Slowly Ding took apart Gukesh's solid position by trade piece by piece by piece. This was good for Ding since he had a good attack on whites pawns, because by the endgame he was up 3 whole pawns which are vital for the defense of the white king!
The next key moment in this game is here:
Move 34. Here all of the major pieces (besides the queens and the kings ofc) are traded off. With Ding having a good attack on the white pieces and leading a good tempo. Evaluation bar favors Ding by 1.9. Slowly Gukesh's position collapses. Ding makes some great moves (According to Chess.com analysis aka. stockfish) which makes the position worse for Gukesh, and eventually Gukesh has to resign since he walked right into an unavoidable, inevitable mating net.
There is no way for Gukesh to defend the d2 square and (if he moves to Kg4) where ever he moves there is a unavoidable checkmate (eventually) which forces him to resign and Ding to win the first game of the Fide World Chess Championship.
I will do my best to keep you updated as this tournament goes on. Thanks for reading!
