D Gukesh defeated Dig Liren on Wednesday for his first win of the 2024 World Chess Championship in Singapore. The scores are now tied 1.5-1.5 points.
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Indian Grandmaster Dommaraju Gukesh defeated China’s Ding Liren to register his first win of the 2024 World Chess Championship match on Wednesday. Gukesh’s win means the overall score is tied at 1.5-1.5 after three games. Liren lost on time after 37 moves. The two players followed the Queen’s Gambit variation. This is Gukesh’s first-ever win over Liren in the classical format, although he has beaten the Chinese in the freestyle chess format.
As it happened |
D Gukesh vs Ding Liren, World Chess Championship Game 3
Gukesh
had lost the first game on Monday and had
followed it up with a draw on Tuesday. Thursday will be a rest day in the 2024 World Chess Championship, with the fourth match of the tournament set to be played on Friday.
D Gukesh vs Ding Liren, World Chess Championship 2024 |
Schedule, live streaming and prize money
Gukesh returned to playing with the white pieces on Wednesday, two days after he had lost the opening game with the same pieces. This time, however, the teenager made sure he wouldn’t commit costly mistakes. Gukesh got off to an aggressive start on Monday and had a similar start on Wednesday, so much so that Liren spent a lot of time thinking on his next moves. Gukesh opened the game with a d4 move, which is the Queen’s Pawn Opening. Gukesh played this move instead of e4, which is a much popular opening move wherein the Kings’ Pawn moves two steps forward.
It was a neck-to-neck battle between the two as Liren once had captured Gukesh’s pawn with a dxe4 move. Gukesh, however, repeated Liren’s move in is next, capturing the latter’s pawn with an dxe4 move.
Liren was behind by almost an hour after Gukesh made his 13th move. Liren moved his knight to d7 after 35 minutes of thinking. Liren’s move meant that Gukesh had one hour and four minutes on the clock. Liren’s strategical error did not help too. Liren had unleashed his bishop to the opposition half and it did not take much for Gukesh to dismantle the China player’s bishop.
After move 31, Liren had less than two minutes on the clock and it was evident that the Chinese player was on the backfoot. Gukesh ended up being the much happier player at the end of the day.