After a quiet draw in Round 2 of the 2024 FIDE World Championship Match, Gukesh Dommaraju played with renewed confidence and defeated Ding Liren in an exciting Queen’s Gambit Declined: Exchange Variation which featured the unusual 7. h3. After his opponent’s surprising seventh move, Ding was out of his preparation and to make matters worse, his light-squared Bishop was forced from f5 by Gukesh’s pawn advancing to g4. Ding Liren thought he could handle the complexities of placing his Bishop in peril on c2 but it ended up being too much a liability. Later in the game, Ding could have played the more natural looking 18…Be7 or even fixed his troubled Bishop with 18…Bf5. However, his choice of 18… Rh5 was a mistake. By the time Gukesh played the powerful 23.Ne2, Ding was in serious trouble on the board and the clock. In the end, he couldn’t overcome these difficulties and lost on time in a doomed position on the chessboard.
If the above description seems complex, it’s because World Championship caliber chess is very complicated. Because of this, California Chess Coach Chris Torres is working on a book which will demystify the 2024 FIDE World Championship Match. In this video, Coach Torres breaks down the main ideas from Game 3 of Ding Liren vs Gukesh Dommaraju match so that players of all levels can appreciate their play.