Bengaluru: After a quiet game in his previous turn with the White, Gukesh arrived for Game 7, armed and ready to spill blood on the board. He drove daggers through Ding Liren and nearly mummified him before the reigning world champion returned from the dead with some stellar endgame defence to force a draw. The spectators’ arena broke into a rapturous applause as the players shook hands after a game that lasted 72 moves and over five hours. It’s the longest game played so far in this World Championship match and the contest remains tied at 3.5-3.5, with seven more classical games remaining.

It mustn’t be easy for Gukesh to reconcile with a setback like this, having had his opponent on the ropes through the greater part of the game. “It’s never pleasant to miss a winning position but I’m happy that I could outplay my opponent quite easily in the opening,” said Gukesh in the press conference that followed, “It’s a missed chance but he also missed some chances earlier in the match… but quite a few positives to take away from it. I guess the biggest lesson is to stay focused and convert good positions.”

The Indian teen won the opening battle on trotting out 1.Nf3 for the first time in this match and went on to uncork a rare, ingenious 7.Re1 move that was clearly cooked up by his team. It cast Ding right away into contemplation for over 20 minutes. “Re1 is a relatively new move and the point was to go dxc4-e4 and get a new position on the board… he didn’t react in a very precise way so I guess the idea worked,” Gukesh said.

Ding later admitted that he was completely thrown off by the move. “I came back from the toilet and was totally shocked,” he said. “I took a lot of time to come up with a reply. Even then it wasn’t accurate.” The world champion ended up responding with the principled 7. dxc4 which led to a fascinating fight for the centre. Ding was soon down to 24 minutes on the clock by move 21.

Gukesh went on to make the strategic mistake of rushing to trade the dark-squared bishops, and then went after Black’s c4 pawn. Here he perhaps overlooked Ding’s resource of springing his knight back into the game. Ding defended bravely and even looked like he might make it over the line alive, with a draw. All he had to do was manoeuvre his knight, hit move 41 and then figure out the rest. But nerves can make players do the inexplicable things. With the clock ticking down to its dying seconds on move 40, Ding blundered. Seven seconds on his clock, he pushed his King to the e5 square instead of galloping his knight to c8 – which would have kept his drawing chances intact. Leela Chess Zero right away pegged Gukesh’s chances for a win at 75 percent, from roughly 19 percent.

After the players reached time control, Ding was on the ropes. Down a pawn, with a weak king on d5 in an objectively lost endgame, he was again back burning through his clock, shaking his head, occasionally looking up at his opponent and trying to pick out the right move out of twenty-odd tempting, false continuations. Gukesh sat at the other end, hands folded across his chest, watching the reigning world champion suffer. Around move 44, Leela gave Gukesh 92 per cent chance of winning the game.

But after spending over 22 minutes trawling through defensive resources, Ding had a few answers. “I was fearing that I was getting outplayed,” Ding said, “But my position was maybe not so bad, I should be more confident of my position.”

Gukesh’s decision to go Bd1 on move 46 allowed Ding to stir up activity. It’s here that Ding brought his endgame skills and resilience to bear – not faltering, even though Gukesh found ways to keep the game going.

Ding’s idea was to restrict White’s bishop and drum up counterplay for his knight. Black’s knight was centralised, King was activated while White’s bishop was on the first rank. Ding went on to trade off the rooks and got rid of White’s final pawn to make a miraculous escape and take a half a point for his efforts. Ding’s team heaved a sigh of relief. “Today I did not give up in a very difficult position… My second (Ni Hua) said I saved my life,” Ding told Chess.com. In the end it was brilliant preparation from Gukesh, outplaying his opponent thoroughly before the reigning world champion dug deep and summoned a fightback. Gukesh was not quite able to see through his opponent’s resources in the endgame.

The match moves to Game 8 on Wednesday and Ding will have the White pieces. It’s possible he might want to play a solid, quiet game and we could see the fireworks back again for Gukesh’s game with the White pieces on Thursday.

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