SINGAPORE: For nearly five hours, D Gukesh showed why he is a challenger for the World Championship. For close to five hours, Ding Liren showed why he's the world champion. In the end, the latter, with the tension ratcheting up by the second, displayed nerves of steel to, first, play precise move after precise move with the clock ticking down, before eliminating danger from the game.
The Indian teen may have had him dead to rights if he had played a specific move in the middlegame but he opted for a different line. It came with the potential of a deadly triple fork with a knight. Liren had only one move. As long as he could find it, the engines rated his chance of survival at close to 100%. If he didn't, his survival was 0%.
For a shade over three minutes and 20 seconds, the Chinese 32-year-old mapped out the board in his mind and studied the lines before playing 31...Rf8. Et voila, he had found it. All the collective tension had seemingly evaporated. The sizable advantage the teen had built up from very early on had melted like ice cream under Chennai sun.
After this position, both players may have as well retreated to the related warmth of their rooms but Gukesh didn't want that. He preferred to keep playing in the hope of turning water into wine. So from a dead draw position, he kept at it, preaching what he had promised several games earlier when he said 'I like playing chess'. But, finally, there was a three-fold repetition after more than 65 moves of quality chess.
The jeopardy is now maximum and the margin of error zero with just one Classical game remaining. If Thursday's match doesn't see a decisive result, the final will go into tie-breaks with shorter time controls on Friday.
Wednesday began with a surprise as Gukesh rode the elevator to the lobby and into the playing hall before the world champion. In the previous 12 games, the 32-year-old had been the first to enter the stage. This was a sign of Gukesh's energy; 44 hours removed from his setback in game 12, he was itching for a fight -- something he admitted in the post-game press conference.
He was already adjusting his White pieces, placing them perfectly between the squares even as the chair opposite him was empty. On the seventh move, he deployed a nifty idea with a3. The engines didn't like it but it forced his senior opponent into the first of his many deep thinks. A few moves later, after the exchange of pawns on d4, White was very active. It was +0.5 on the bar. On the commentary for chess24, both Daniel Naroditsky and Peter Leko liked Gukesh's construction so far.
But it was far from a done deal for both sides. Every move felt like stepping on a live grenade. The position was so complicated for Black that the engines were divided on 'best moves'. That kind of stress was visible on Liren's face. He ran his hands over his face multiple times while pondering his position. He also resorted to stress-eating a bag of nuts in the players' lounge. On the Chessbase India stream, Viswanathan Anand remarked that White had no danger.
That, though, wasn't enough. He wanted a one-two punch, a killer blow. Shortly afterwards, he found 22...Bf4 (a rare double exclamation from chess.com's engine; a brilliant move) as he targeted the Black rook on the b file.
With so many critical moves lined up, one player was bound to slip up and Liren found himself in peril after 30...Qf7. One engine's eval bar soared over 2. Others gave the Indian an advantage of over 1.3. Would he spot the move 31...Rxe8? If he had, the logical ending of the line would have resulted in a Rook endgame with Gukesh having an extra pawn (4 v. 3). But he went for 31...Ne4 as he didn't see his opponent's Rf8. To be fair, even Liren didn't immediately see it. "I thought of Rc7 and didn't see anything else and almost gave up. Didn't see any other move," he said in the press conference.
Once he found it, what followed was academic. And, then, onto Thursday for one final (or penultimate time). By this time 24 hours later, Gukesh may be ruining this chance as the one that cost him a shot at history.
Time will tell.