Chess World Championship: Gukesh holds Liren with black to remain level after six games

Indian challenger D Gukesh held defending champion Ding Liren of China to a draw with black pieces in an intense sixth game of the World Chess Championship to remain level on points.

The third draw in a row left both players on an identical tally of 3 points apiece. The two players signed peace after 46 moves. It was the fourth draw of the match. It remains to be seen what strategy the players would opt for as the match moves towards the half-way mark.

The 32-year-old Liren had won the opening game while the 18-year-old Gukesh had emerged victorious in the third game. With eight games still remaining in the 14-round match, the battle will resume after the second rest day on Monday. If the scores are tied after the eight games, there is an extra day for tie-break games of shorter duration to decide the world champion.

Gukesh later said he did not feel any real danger during the sixth game. “I knew this position till Rb8 (Black’s 16th move) and even though I did not know (the next) I thought maybe I am slightly worse but it should be really hard to convert it with white because you cannot push the queen side pawns easily and I always have play on his king. I wasn’t really that worried at any point,” Gukesh said.

Asked about the rationale behind his decision to avoid repetition early, Gukesh said, “May be I am slightly worse, although I was not even sure about it, but with open files I thought I will have counter play. I thought since he’s going for a repetition I will just play for a few more moves and see, obviously it was not playing for a win or anything.”

Liren seemed to be gaining in confidence with each passing game even though he was written off by most of the top players in the world.

Playing with white pieces, Liren for once solved all his opening problems without much ado as he went for the super-solid London system with his third white in the match and blitzed out the first 20 moves, conceding a mere seven minutes on the clock.

In the process though, all the knights and bishops had changed hands, leading to a queen and rook endgame with equal pawns.