Never has a chess world championship titleholder seemed as vulnerable.
On Monday, Ding Liren, the reigning world champion, will begin a match in Singapore to defend the title against the 18-year-old player Gukesh Dommaraju. According to many of the world’s best players, and Ding himself, he will be the underdog.
An absent and possibly ‘broken’ champion.
Ding, 32, from China, won the title in April 2023 by beating Ian Nepomniachtchi in a thrilling playoff. Afterward, amid physical and mental exhaustion, Ding vanished from the circuit for the rest of the year, withdrawing from many events that he had committed to playing. His absence was unusual for a champion.
When he did return to action, he was clearly not the same player. It was not only a problem of being rusty: He played tentatively and struggled in most of his games and seemed to lack confidence. His results were far below his previous level and also below the level of what might be expected of a world champion.
At a tournament in the Netherlands in January, he finished ninth out of 14 competitors. A month later, in a Chess 960 tournament in Germany, he lost 10 of 13 games. (Chess 960 is a variant in which the pieces on the back ranks are shuffled into one of 960 possible starting configurations.)
At a tournament in Norway in July, he finished last. At the Sinquefield Cup in St. Louis in August, he finished tied for second-to-last. And at the biennial Chess Olympiad in Budapest in September, he failed to win a game while playing the top board for his team.
As his performance suffered, Ding’s world ranking fell to No. 23 from No. 3.
“The question is whether he is sort of permanently broken from the last world championship that he played,” said Magnus Carlsen, the former world champion, on the podcast Chess Chat. “I’m not sure, but I think there is a possibility that he could be.”
In an interview in September on the YouTube channel of the chess app TakeTakeTake, Ding expressed his fears about the upcoming match. “I am worried about losing very badly,” he said, adding, “Hopefully it won’t happen.”
An 18-year-old challenger is a rising star.
Gukesh, Ding’s opponent, who is from India, is only 18. But he has, for the most part, played superbly this year.
His victory in the candidates tournament in Toronto in April to qualify as Ding’s challenger was a surprise because he was the youngest participant in the field and not the highest-ranked. But he displayed a level of maturity beyond his years and managed the pressure better than the other competitors.
Though he had a slightly subpar result at the Sinquefield Cup in St. Louis, he played the top board for his team, at the Olympiad in Budapest, recording eight wins and two draws with no losses. That performance earned him an individual gold medal and also helped lead India to the team gold medal, the first in the country’s history.
Gukesh is now ranked No. 5 in the world, a career best.
Top players predict victory for Gukesh.
In an interview in October, Hikaru Nakamura, who is ranked No. 3, said: “I don’t see it being a close match. I think all the signs point to a clear and dominating Gukesh victory.”
Still, many top players are hoping that Ding returns to form in time for the match. Soft-spoken and mild mannered, Ding is well-liked and greatly respected by his peers.
In a video posted earlier this month by the International Chess Federation, the game’s governing body, Peter Svidler, an eight-time Russian champion, said of Ding, “I am a huge fan of his.” Referring to Ding’s 2017 to 2019 peak, Svidler added, “He was a very, very scary player.”
They’re not the two best players.
Some fans and players are dismissing the match’s importance because neither Ding nor Gukesh are ranked among the top two in the world. (Those positions are held by Carlsen, who voluntarily relinquished the title in 2022, and Fabiano Caruana of the United States.)
Garry Kasparov, the ex-world champion, who reigned over the chess world for 20 years, said in an interview last month at the St. Louis Chess Club: “I don’t treat it as a world championship match. For me, a world championship match was always a match for the title of the best player in the world.”
Nevertheless, should Gukesh win, he would become the youngest world champion in history, breaking Kasparov’s record. The match, which could run through Dec. 13, is best of 14 games. The total prize fund is $2.5 million, with each player earning $200,000 for each victory.
For his part, Gukesh is not taking anything for granted. Speaking with The Hindustan Times last month, he said, “I don’t believe in predictions and favorites and don’t really buy into the things that people say about the match,” adding, “I’m preparing for Ding at his best.”
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