What time is Game 14 of the Ding Liren v Gukesh Dommaraju world chess championship?
China’s Ding Liren is defending the world chess championship against fast-rising Indian teenager Gukesh Dommaraju. The best-of-14-games match for an overall prize fund of $2.5m (£1.98m) is all square at 6½-6½ after 13 games.
Either Ding or Gukesh can win the world title with a win in today’s 14th game. If it ends in a draw, a series of tiebreak games with faster time controls will be played on Friday to determine the champion.
Key events
Game 14 is under way!
The King’s Indian Attack is on the board. Ding opens with 1 Kf3 before developing the light-square bishop with a fianchetto.
The format
Here’s a review of the format for the world championship match. Ding and Gukesh have played 13 of 14 classical games with each player awarded one point for a win and a half-point for a draw. The score is tied 6½-6½, meaning either player can clinch the title with a win in today’s game. If it results in another draw and the match ends in a 7-7 deadlock, a series of tiebreak games with faster time controls will be played on Friday.
A match consisting of four rapid games with 15 minutes per side and a 10-second increment starting with move 1 would be played. If a player scores 2½ points or more, he would win the championship.
If the score is still equal, a mini-match of two rapid games would be played, with 10 minutes per side and a five-second increment starting with move 1. If a player scored 1½ points or more, he would win the championship.
If the score is equal after the rapid portion, a mini-match of two blitz games would be played, with a time control of three minutes per side and a two-second increment starting with move 1. If a player scored 1½ points or more, he would win the championship. A drawing of lots would take place before each mini-match to decide which player plays with the white pieces.
If the blitz mini-match are tied, a single blitz game with a time control of three minutes per side and a two-second increment starting with move 1 would be played, and the winner would win the championship. A drawing of lots would decide which player plays with the white pieces. If this game was drawn, another blitz game with reversed colors would be played with the same time control, and the winner would win the championship. This process is repeated until either player wins a game.
The complete official regulations can be found here.
We’ve gone through the 138-year history of the world championship and chosen 22 of the most memorable games. You can go move by move through each of them here. It’s the perfect timesuck with roughly 10 minutes to go before today’s first move.
From the middle of the 16th century, there have come down to us the names of chess players who have been widely regarded as the strongest of their time. The earliest of these was the Spanish priest Ruy López de Segura, after whom one of the most popular openings of modern times is named. Others who followed include the Calabrese Gioachino Greco, François-André Danican Philidor, Louis-Charles Mahé de La Bourdonnais, Alexander McDonnell, Howard Staunton, Adolf Anderssen, Mikhail Chigorin and Paul Morphy, each of whom are lionized for their contributions to the development of theory and strategy as well as their dominance over their board during their respective eras.
But not until Wilhelm Steinitz and Johannes Zukertort sat down in a small room at 80 Fifth Avenue in New York City on the afternoon of 11 January 1886 did a formal competition to determine the best player on the planet come to pass. Their first-to-10-wins encounter was held in three US cities over the next 78 days for a prize fund of $4,000. Since then, the world chess championship has provided the stage for countless unforgettable contests showcasing the precision, imagination and brilliance of the royal game at the highest level.
The credibility of Ding’s world title, of course, remains an open question. The absence of Magnus Carlsen continues to loom large over the sport’s showcase event. The 33-year-old Norwegian has been ranked No 1 for more than 14 straight years and was considered the world’s best player even before he defeated Viswanathan Anand for the world championship in 2013. He strengthened his claim as the greatest player of any era in 2021, when he crushed Nepomniachtchi in Dubai in the fourth defense of the title.
But Carlsen decided against defending it for a fifth time in 2023, citing a lack of motivation to go through the months-long slog of preparation that championship matches demand. It marked only the second time in the history of world title matchplay that a holder opted not to defend his crown after Bobby Fischer controversially forfeited the belt in 1975.
Instead, Ding defeated Nepomniatchi in a thrilling match for the vacant title, even if critics including longtime world champion Garry Kasparov branded it an “amputated” event without the world’s best player involved.
Kasparov only doubled down on that sentiment ahead of this year’s title match, saying:
My hottest take is that I don’t treat it as a world championship match. For me a world championship match was always the match for the title of the best player in the world. I think the history of the world championship matches, it started, by the way, here in St Louis, with Steinitz facing Zukertort back in 1886, has ended with Magnus Carlsen. There were 16 world champions, you could call them at every given moment the best players. It’s those who took the title by beating the best player. With all due respect, Ding playing Gukesh, it’s an important event, it’s still a Fide event, it’s an ‘official title’, but these days with all the modern technologies, with chess getting faster and faster, with our lives getting also faster, to keep an antiquated system of qualification, 18 months or longer, to select the challenger, it’s not adequate. … It’s an event that has nothing to do with the main idea of the world championship – to decide, to define the best player on the planet.
Well then!
Preamble
Hello and welcome to Game 14 of the world chess championship. China’s Ding Liren and India’s Gukesh Dommaraju are facing off in a best-of-14-games match for the winner’s share of a $2.5m (£1.98m) prize fund at the Equarius Hotel at Resorts World Sentosa, an island resort off Singapore’s southern coast. It’s the first time in the 138-year history of world championship matchplay that two men from Asia are competing for the sport’s most prestigious title.
Ding became China’s first men’s world chess champion by defeating Ian Nepomniachtchi last year on tiebreakers in Kazakhstan. Known for his solid and precise playing style based on creating small positional advantages from quiet openings, the 32-year-old from Zhejiang province is the highest-rated Chinese player of all time. A graduate of Peking University Law School, he once went unbeaten in 100 straight classical games, a record streak broken only by Magnus Carlsen in 2019.
Gukesh Dommaraju, commonly known as Gukesh D, is an 18-year-old Indian prodigy who became the third-youngest grandmaster in history at 12 years and seven months. In April, at 17, the Chennai native stunned the chess establishment by winning the eight-man Candidates tournament in Toronto to become the youngest ever challenger for the world championship, finishing top of a stacked field that included Nepomniachtchi, Hikaru Nakamura and Fabiano Caruana. An aggressive player known for using sharp, tactical openings to create complex positions aimed at unsettling opponents, he can shatter the record for youngest ever undisputed world champion held by Garry Kasparov, who was 22 when he dethroned Karpov in their 1985 rematch in Moscow.
We’re a little more than a half hour from the ceremonial first move. Plenty more to come.
What time is Game 14 of the Ding Liren v Gukesh Dommaraju world chess championship?
China’s Ding Liren is defending the world chess championship against fast-rising Indian teenager Gukesh Dommaraju. The best-of-14-games match for an overall prize fund of $2.5m (£1.98m) is all square at 6½-6½ after 13 games.
Either Ding or Gukesh can win the world title with a win in today’s 14th game. If it ends in a draw, a series of tiebreak games with faster time controls will be played on Friday to determine the champion.
Bryan will be here shortly. In the meantime here’s a look back at Wednesday’s high-wire Game 13.
