World Chess C’ship: Ding and Gukesh play out a quick draw in game 10

The streak of draws between challenger D Gukesh of India and the defending champion Ding Liren of China continued in game 10 of the World Chess Championship 2024 in Singapore on Saturday.

Both the players agreed on a three-fold repetition with the back-and-forth movement of their bishops on the C-file, ending the match in a pale draw after 36 moves in two hours and 30 minutes.

A Comfortable Draw

Ding started the match with the London Opening (d4 Nf6) with the white pieces and both players continued with their theory and made a few quick moves to start the match.

On move 10, Gukesh took 26 minutes to make his next move from Nf6 to Nh5. However, he failed to find any further opening in the game to put pressure on Ding's solid preparation and both players went for the middle game exchanges.

They showed their class with impressive accuracy in the match to nullify each other's attempt to break through the position. Ding had a solid accuracy of 98.7 while Gukesh maintained an accuracy of 98.8.

Eventually, the game ended in a draw, maintaining their equal position in the match at 5-5. With just four games to go before the tie-breaker, both players will be trying to move past this game and return with yet another solid preparation tomorrow.

The Indian youngster will return the white pieces tomorrow in game 11, and the fans are expecting another grueling battle as Gukesh will be aiming to take a crucial advantage in the match.

"Nowadays, white and black color doesn’t make a huge difference. It’s just four more very interesting games to go" Gukesh said in the press conference, before for the next game.