Chinese world champion Ding Li, 32, and Indian rival Gukesh Dommaraju, 18, are the youngest ever title challengers in a $2.6 million 14-fight fight in Singapore on Saturday. The opening ceremony of the championship, the first game is scheduled to start at 12 o’clock.
This will be the 50th time the crown has been fought since 1886 and the first time both contestants are Asian. The first place finishers at that time were almost always contestants, but not in 2023 or 2024. The world champion has not won a Classics match since January. Gukesh is a 1-5 favorite, while Ding is a 10-3 favorite.
Magnus Carlsen, the game’s main player who won the championship for ten consecutive years before stepping down last year, will also come to Singapore, but only as a spectator for the first few games.
Carlsen’s opinion on the game: “Gukesh is the favorite and if he starts he will win without any difficulty, but the longer it goes without a decisive game, the better for Ding because he has the ability but lacks confidence.
World No. 1 Carlsen and U.S. champion and world No. 2 Fabiano Caruana will also play two freestyle chess mini-matches in Singapore on November 21 and 22. The arrangement of the chess pieces is randomly arranged. Carlson leads 1-0. There will be five Freestyle Tour events in 2025, each with a prize purse of $750,000.
Carlsen is pleased with the decision to give up the classical title and the months of preparation it takes every other year. He successfully defended his title four times, continues to be the best in the world at rapid chess and blitz, and is tied with or ahead of Garry Kasparov and Bobby Fischer at the pinnacle of chess history.
The outcome of Ding vs. Gukesh depends on whether Ding, who has not competed publicly since August, can regain some of his previous strength and win the championship. Until 2019, Ding Junhui’s pre-pandemic status was very stable, and he would have been the most popular. His 100-game unbeaten run in 2017-18 was a record at the time, although that mark has since been surpassed by Carlsen’s 125 games.
Previously, Ding obtained a law degree from Peking University, but the epidemic severely affected his chess career. His hometown of Wenzhou was under a long-term lockdown, which affected his results after resuming competition. In 2023, he left chess for several months due to mental illness. In 2024, he was in poor form and was hesitant at critical moments.
When Ding met Gukesh at the Sinquefield Cup in August, he chose 20 Bd3 and then sacrificed the bishop and rook for a permanent check instead of the obvious 20 Re1, bringing another piece into the attack and being favored by the computer . In other games in 2024, this hesitation turned a favorable situation into a failure.
Despite many negative omens, Ding Junhui still led his personal battle against Gukesh in the classic match and achieved the results shown above with two wins, one draw and zero losses. In January in Wijk aan Zee, Ding Junhui had a negative score, but one of his two wins came against Gukš.
In a pre-FIFA interview, Ding admitted that he is currently in poor form but believes that matches and tournaments “are two different things. When a player starts to hit his stride, how the opponents react depends on their experience And how they handled the situation. Ding Junhui was also at a disadvantage in the 2023 championship match against Ian Nepomniachtchi, but was defeated by the second Hungarian Richard Laporte. Richard Rapport, who is likely to be Ding Junhui’s opponent again in Singapore.
How does Din rate his chances? “I’m not in particularly good shape, not in particularly bad shape, but I’m definitely over the worst part of the last year and a half. I know I’ve been playing pretty good chess — I just can’t switch some of the Position. I believe I can turn it around, maybe during the game.
The son of an otolaryngologist and a microbiologist, Gukesh Dommaraju learned chess at the age of seven and grew into a child prodigy. He became a grandmaster at 12 years and seven months, the third youngest in history, but there was also a controversial incident at the 2018 Bangkok Olympics when two chess players, Nigel Short Forgetting to ring the clock, Gukesh jumped up to celebrate the lowering of the flag. Gukesh was a very active player as a teenager and progressed quickly. He is the third youngest person in history to exceed 2,700 points, the youngest person to exceed 2,750 points, and can easily reach 2,800 points during the World Championships.
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Gukesh will continue to have Grzegorz Gaevski as his head coach. The 39-year-old Pole’s clinical strategy, halving his arch-rivals and scoring on the tail end that helped him in last year’s Candidates campaign paid off in the end as he beat by a crucial half-point Caruana and Nepomniačić.
India’s first world champion Vish Anand has been Gukesh’s mentor for many years and often provides advice during matches, but Anand is also FIDE vice-president and needs to remain neutral.
Gukesh believes he can handle the game decisions as the game progresses. “I play in a lot of high-pressure situations.” He also doesn’t care about the time it takes for computer preparation, a factor in Carlson’s stepping down.
“It’s a new experience for me. It’s hard work but I enjoy it, so we’ll see how things develop.” He also believes his age will prove to be an advantage: “I have more More energy and it’s easier to stay focused during long matches. “
The preliminaries are coming to an end, who will win? I expect Gukesh to be cautious in the first few games and then explore and work hard in the mid-game. Ding Junhui’s state in 2024 is really miserable. It is already difficult to see how he can retain the championship. Gukesh’s margin of 7.5-4.5 looks about right.
Who do Guardian readers think will win? Please tell us in the comment box.
3947 1….Ne5+! If 2 Nxe5 Bf5+ 3 Kh5 Kg8/g7+ 4 Bh6 Ng3 are paired. If 2 Kh4 Kg8+! 3 Nxh8 Bxg5 mate.
