The World Championship Begins Today

Who will win?

Not only does the match begin today, but it begins - alas for those of us in the Western Hemisphere - it begins at 4 a.m. ET, which is 5 p.m. local time in Singapore where the match is played.

For those new to the game or just emerging from a months-long sleep under a metaphorical rock, the match is between the champion, Ding Liren of China, and the winner of the 2024 Candidates, Gukesh Dommaraju of India. Ding Liren won the title in early 2023, winning a nail-biting championship match against Ian Nepomniachtchi. Since then, unfortunately, he has been a shell of his former self. He barely played in 2023 after winning the title, and his results this year have been uniformly dismal. Gukesh, by contrast, has gone from one success to another, gaining tons of rating points thanks to his win in the Candidates and especially in his mind-blowing performance in the Olympics. He scored 9/10, winning the gold medal on board 1 with an astounding 3056 TPR. On paper, at least, Gukesh is a serious favorite to win the title.

More about the match: it’s a 14-game classical match that runs from today, November 25, through December 12 (if it goes through all 14 classical games; if there’s a playoff, it will be on the 13th). The time control is 40 moves in two hours, and at move 41 the players get an extra 30 minutes plus a 30 second per move bonus. The playoff, if necessary, will begin with a best-of-four mini-match with a 15’+10” time control, with increasingly fast time controls if that ends in a 2-2 tie.

The schedule is straightforward: they’ll play for three straight days, then get a day off. The first rest day, accordingly, will be on Thursday - happy Thanksgiving, Americans! Gukesh will have the white pieces in game 1.

Okay, so who’s going to win? Pretty much everyone has made Gukesh a significant favorite, and if the players continue to play as they have all year there’s little reason to doubt that assessment. Just about the only bright spot Ding can point to since winning the title in early 2023 is that he defeated Gukesh in Tata Steel at the start of the year in their head-to-head game. That’s something. His peak rating is greater than Gukesh’s, and indeed, for most of the past few years his rating has been at or higher than Gukesh’s current rating, which is near his (Gukesh’s) peak.

A key question is whether there’s something objectively wrong with Ding or his chess, or if it’s a confidence issue. If the latter, then if he manages to get off to a stable start, and especially if he somehow manages to take an early lead, then anything could happen. If Gukesh gets off to an early lead, then I fear that the pessimistic consensus about Ding’s chances will prove prescient.

If you’re looking for their track record, it’s limited. In classical chess, it’s good news for Ding: wins with Black in Tata Steel in 2023 and (as mentioned above) 2024, followed by a draw with White three months ago in the Sinquefield Cup. They also played a Chess960 game this February (won by Gukesh, with White) and drew both a blitz and a rapid game in 2021 (Ding was White in both games). It’s useful to remember that while Ding is 32 years old - not old, but well-established - Gukesh is just 18 and still rapidly improving. Older games don’t mean too much, though it’s obviously better to point to a +2 rather than a -2 score.

To wrap up: unless Ding has been playing ‘possum - and it seems to me extremely unlikely that he would have done so in the Olympics - he does not seem ready to fight on equal terms with Gukesh. But human beings are resilient, and in the match with Nepo Ding proved himself to be a great fighter. If he can again rise to the occasion we could have a terrific match. If not, the question is whether the match will resemble the drubbing Nepo suffered against Magnus Carlsen. I lean towards the latter scenario, but hope I’m wrong. What do you say?

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