Monday, 9 December 2024

2024 World Chess Championship - Checks and captures

 There is a famous story concerning Boris Spassky (which I have previously posted). about blunders coming in pairs. In Game 11 of the World Chess Championship showed this to be true.

Gukesh chose an opening that lead to an unbalanced position (a reverse Blumenfeld), but the main effect was that both players used up a lot of time in the opening. White pushed his b pawn all the way to b6, which was probably a sacrifice intended to open the b file for White's rooks. As both players began to run short of time, Gukesh found a knight manoeuvrer, involving Nb1-a3-c2-a1-b3-c5, the last move which was in response to a poor move by Ding ( 26 ... e6). He could have won back his pawn with a little tactic (28.Nxb7) but chose to swing his rook to the b file. Ding could have closed of the file with 28 ... Nb4, but to paraphrase Spassky, a small mistake is often followed by a bigger one.  

Failing to follow the advice of 'look at all checks and captures', Ding hurriedly played 28 ... Qc8?? and resigned after 29.Qxc6 was played. 

A real tragedy for Ding,  and a real boost for Gukesh. Not only does he hold a 1 point lead with 3 games left to play, the effect of such a blunder on Ding may destroy his confidence for the rest of the match.


Gukesh D (2783) - Ding,Liren (2728) [A09]
FIDE World Championship Match 2024 Singapore SGP (11), 08.12.2024


No comments: