The 2024 FIDE World Chess Championship resumes with game 7, after a rest day for India’s D Gukesh and Ding Liren. The duo will push to take the lead with the match tied at 3 points each.
Despite being a draw, Game 6 threw up plenty of questions, as Gukesh opted to reject the offer of a draw when in a weaker position against Ding. The Chinese world champion continued on without pressing for the win, and Gukesh fought his way back into an even position before accepting a draw via three-fold repetition after 46 moves.
It was a different strategy from Gukesh, who had earlier been generally happy to accept a draw with black pieces. He later revealed it wasn’t a psychological ploy but rather a situational one, since he felt he still had an opening when Ding first offered the draw – despite most engines stating the Indian’s disadvantageous position.
Five-time world champion and world no. 1 Magnus Carlsen was not impressed by Gukesh’s performance, following up his earlier criticism by telling Take Take Take, “I will stand by what I said earlier about Gukesh. He has generally not impressed me. Ding has probably done a little better than we thought. Gukesh has probably been a little bit worse.”
The seventh game of the World Championship match will take place on Tuesday, December 3, with the game starting at 2:30 PM IST. Gukesh will be playing with white and Ding with black, which has yielded two definitive results from the three times it has occured so far.
You can follow all the updates from game 7 on our live blog:
