World Chess Championship: Ding Liren tries to catch Gukesh off guard but Game 4 ends in drab draw | Chess News

The fourth installment of the World Chess Championship ended in a 42-move draw on Friday. After most of the pieces had left the board, the game ended with a three-fold repetition after a little dance between Gukesh’s rook and Ding Liren’s king who shuffled forwards and backwards.
This is the second game at the 2024 World Chess Championship with white pieces where Ding Liren, the world champion from China, has accepted a draw. The other two games — Game 1 and Game 3 — where Gukesh played with white pieces ended in decisive results with Ding winning one and Gukesh winning the other.
The game is now poised at 2-2 with both players having one victory each.
“It’s a solid game with black. Towards the end, I had some chances to press (for a win). But with black, that’s all you expect in a match,” said Gukesh, satisfied with a draw.
In the fourth game, Ding Liren started off with an unusual set of opening moves, once again trying to catch Gukesh off guard.
“It was not a completely new line. I had seen it somewhere, but it was a bit of a surprise when I saw it on the board. At some point, I felt that he had some slight edge, but I felt I had neutralised it,” said Gukesh in the post-match press conference.
The opening was something that made Gukesh burn up some early time on the clock. But he was able to diffuse the tension.
“Ding’s game strategy is simple. He wants to take Gukesh off his excellent home preparation. This forces Gukesh to spend a lot of time on the board to come up with the right ideas/moves/plans. Ding believes that Gukesh is more vulnerable when he is out of preparation and low on time,” pointed out chess legend Susan Polgar on X.

Ding’s game strategy is simple. He wants to take Gukesh off his excellent home preparation. This forces Gukesh to spend a lot of time on the board to come up with the right ideas/moves/plans. Ding believes that Gukesh is more vulnerable when he is out of preparation and low on… pic.twitter.com/HUXP2pD817
— Susan Polgar (@SusanPolgar) November 29, 2024
The game seemed to be ambling towards a draw the middle game itself as the pieces were getting traded off pretty quickly. In the end game, with just one rook and four pawns left on the board besides the king and queen for both players, Gukesh chose to push the pawn on his f file to f5. That was a risky move, but one that indicated to Ding Liren that he was not going to get an easy draw like they played out in Game 2 in 23 moves.

But eventually, Ding did get the draw that he was playing for since the opening phase.