After a wild five hours, India’s GM Gukesh Dommaraju lost to reigning champion China’s GM Ding Liren, in Round 1 of World Chess Championship 2024, at Singapore's Equarius Hotel in Resorts World Sentosa, on Monday, November 25.
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The 32-year-old Chinese took a 1-0 lead in the 14-game Championship, with the GM to reach 7.5 points first set to win the world title. It was Liren&039;s first classical win in 304 days.
Liren said: "I feel very good. I haven’t won a single classical game for a long time and today I managed to do that. But this game, I think to be fair, it’s very lucky for me because I missed two tactics.”
The 18-year-old Gukesh came up with an early surprise in the opening, pushing his king pawn forward, with attacking intentions in a line similar to what the legendary Viswanathan Anand picked in his first world championship-winning contest against Alexei Shirov of Spain in 2001. The Chinese chose the French defense to combat the situation.
Before the game, in their past head-to-head encounters Gukesh and Ding had played each other thrice in classical time controls, out of which Ding has won twice with black while their last match at the Sinquefield Cup was a draw.
Ding Liren became the 17th world champion in history after defeating Ian Nepomniachtchi in Astana last year.
Gukesh, who had White in this round squandered time advantage to eventually lose the first round.
The Indian youngster, a pre-event favorite, looked in command as Ding played the French Defense and burned up 27 minutes on move seven, while Gukesh blitzed out an attacking novelty.
When the young Indian slipped, Ding seized the initiative and followed up brilliantly to clinch victory.
After it became clear that a loss was impending, Gukesh resigned on the 42nd move.
The youngster World Championship challenger will have the dark pieces in the second round on Tuesday.
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Gukesh, who is the youngest ever challenger for the world championship crown will aim to bounce back immediately in Round 2.