Game 4 in the 2024 FIDE World Championship Match in Singapore ended in a 42-move draw after threefold repetition on Friday, November 29, a result that ensured the title match remained level at 2 points apiece ahead of the fifth round on Saturday.

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With a game headed into a Rook endgame, India’s GM Gukesh Dommaraju, the world’s youngest World Championship challenger, and the defending champion, China's GM Ding Liren, agreed to split the honours with repetition on the 42nd move.

https://x.com/FIDE_chess/status/1862482107164963315

The defending champion was playing with white pieces in game 4 after Gukesh secured a confidence-boosting victory in Game 3 right before the first rest day, on Thursday.

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The first ceremonial move for Gukesh D at Game 4 of the FIDE World Championship was made by GM Viswanathan Anand, five-time World Champion and two-time World Cup winner. Anand, the father of the Indian chess boom, became the first grandmaster from India in 1988. In 2022, he was elected as the deputy president of FIDE.

GM Xie Jun, four-time Women’s World Champion, made the first ceremonial move for compatriot Ding Liren. Xie Jun is the first Asian woman to become a chess grandmaster. She is a FIDE Vice-President and the current president of the Chinese Chess Association. In 2019, she was inducted into the World Chess Hall of Fame.

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If the 18-year-old from Chennai beats Ding Liren, after 14 classical games, he will become not just the 18th World Champion but also the youngest in history, breaking the record set by Garry Kasparov in 1985.

The World Championship Match consist of 14 games. The player who scores 7.5 points or more wins the Match, and no further games are played.

If the score is equal after 14 games, the winner is decided by a tiebreak.