Game 10: Ding, Gukesh have Monday blues on World Chess Championship weekend

Ding Liren and D Gukesh possibly felt Monday blues on a Saturday as the World Chess Championship resumed after a rest day. Like workers hungover from a weekend, the reigning champion and his young challenger wanted Game 10 to end as quickly as possible; it ended in a draw in just 2.5 hours, after merely 36 moves, the quickest of the match since Game 2.

Both players have 5 points each, and there are four more classical games left in the match. If this was a long-distance race, now is about time for the competitors to accelerate, or won't they?

"There is not so much room to make mistakes now," Ding said in his post-game analysis. Ding, determined to retain his title, and Gukesh, aiming to be the youngest world champion, have kept each other guessing by playing out the seventh straight draw in the match.

In the last world chess championship, there were five decisive games after 10 rounds. Here, in Singapore, there have been just two: Game 1, which Ding won, and Game 3, in which the 18-year-old Indian equalised.

"I think we are both trying to outwit each other," Gukesh claimed. "In every game we are trying to create chances and not waiting for the opponent to make mistakes," Ding answered.

London on the board
Ding started by pushing his queen-pawn to d4, and the game emerged into a 'London system', a theoretical opening in which both players are well-versed.

After nine moves, both queens were left eye-balling each other on an open file. "Either you take me, or I take you," they might have screamed at each other. Ding's queen obliged five moves later, and soon there was a flurry of captures: Bishop takes bishop, rooks cutting each other and the knights too.

The middle-game had smoothly transitioned into end-game. Ding and Gukesh were left with a bishop each and a handful of pawns strewn across. Then, it happened, like, three other times in the match already. Ding and Gukesh casually repeated a position, which in chess terms is called a threefold repetition, and a theoretical draw emerged.

Gukesh will play white in Game 11 on Sunday. The first player to reach 7.5 points will be crowned, or at the end of Game 14, tie-breakers will be held.