World champion Ding Liren and world champion challenger Gukesh D talk after their match ended in a draw at the Sinquefield Cup in St Louis. (PHOTO: Lennart Ootes via Grand Chess Tour)
At the upcoming World Chess Championship in Singapore, there is a growing consensus that Ding Liren, the man with the crown currently on his head, will be an underdog against D Gukesh, his 18-year-old challenger from India. And Indian Grandmasters Pravin Thipsay and Abhijit Kunte have added heft to that belief. They believe that Gukesh will be favourite in the 14-game match. And not just that, the duo believes that the Indian could be crowned the 18th world champion before the battle reaches the 12th game.
Multiple grandmasters including Garry Kasparov, Magnus Carlsen, Hikaru Nakamura and Anish Giri have spoken about how Gukesh will have the upper hand going into the most prestigious event of his fledgling career. Ding Liren himself has spoken about how Gukesh will have the edge given the form he has been in since becoming world champion in 2023 and the exploits of the Indian prodigy on the board.
When asked for his prediction for the World Championship at a conclave organised by the Sports Journalists Association of Mumbai at the MIG Cricket Club, Kunte, who was India’s fourth GM, predicted: “I think Gukesh will win by round 12.” To this, Thipsay, India’s 3rd GM in history, added: “We will not see a 12th game!”
At the World Championship, the player to reach 7.5 points will be crowned the winner. Each win earns one point with a draw helping both players get half a point.
Thipsay spoke highly of Gukesh’s “strength of character” and his maturity. “Gukesh has a mindset which says: ‘Okay, if I do it badly now, I will do it better tomorrow’. Very much like (Anatoly) Karpov had. Even if you look at the styles of the players, Gukesh’s style resembles Karpov’s. Gukesh is a young boy of 18 taking on Ding, who is 32 and someone who we would presume to be mature,” Thipsay said.
“But if you look at their personalities, the character, the strength of the person, I would say that Ding is like a child and Gukesh is like a grown-up. After the fourth game in last year’s World Championship, we saw Ding started to cry. He probably played the worst game (of his career). Then he came out with a reaction that gave away that it was the worst game in his lifetime.”
Kunte, meanwhile, heaped praise on how Gukesh was laser-focussed on his craft, with no scope for distractions. “Yes, Gukesh does know how to switch off. But when he does that, he does it because of chess! Everything he does, he looks at how it will benefit his chess. If you have that kind of attitude, you will grow immensely,” said Kunte.
Kunte added that the Ding we’re seeing now is a shadow of the formidable player the world saw in 2017 and 2018 where he had gone over 90 games unbeaten.
“The Ding we see today is like the second era of Ding Liren. The first era was before COVID. Ding 1.0 was very strong while Ding 2.0 is not so much. He, in fact, avoided playing against Gukesh in the Olympiad which was a surprise to all of us,” said Kunte, who pointed out that Gukesh was a player who was great in classical format, but not as good in shorter time controls of rapid and blitz. “That’s why Ding might want the game to go the distance (into the tie breaks which have shorter time control).”
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