Ding vs Gukesh, Game 14

The 2024 World Championship was played in Singapore between the defending champion, Ding Liren of China, and the challenger, Gukesh D of India, who had earned the match by winning the Candidates tournament in Toronto at seventeen. Over fourteen classical games the lead changed hands: Ding won the first game, Gukesh the third and the eleventh, Ding the twelfth. Before the last classical game the score stood at 6.5–6.5.

Ding had White and chose a quiet road. A Réti-style opening became a reversed Grünfeld; on move twenty a knight offer, 20.Nf4, set off a run of exchanges that left the board half empty. On move twenty-nine Ding gave up a pawn with 29.b4 to force the queens off, leaving a rook and a light-squared bishop each, Black a pawn up. Engines rated this ending a draw move after move.

Gukesh pressed anyway. For twenty-five moves he shuffled his king and bishop and pushed his pawns to g4 and f5, while Ding's clock ran below ten minutes. Then, on move fifty-five, Ding played 55.Rf2, offering to trade rooks, the natural way to simplify toward a draw.

It was the only way to lose. After 55...Rxf2 56.Kxf2 Gukesh found 56...Bd5!, offering his bishop in turn. White could not avoid the trade, and once the bishops were gone what remained was a king-and-pawn ending in which Black's extra pawn decides. After 57.Bxd5 Kxd5 58.Ke3 Ke5 Ding resigned. By his own account, Gukesh did not see at once that he was winning.

The result made Gukesh, at eighteen years and six months, the youngest undisputed world champion in history, beating by more than four years the record Garry Kasparov had held since 1985, and the second Indian champion after Viswanathan Anand. Ding was widely praised for the fight he gave.