D Gukesh got off the mark in the 2024 Chess World Championship with an early draw against Ding Liren. The reigning champion, of course, leads the match 1.5-0.5 after Monday's thrilling win.
The match started with a confident Ding motoring along with his practiced opening, a four knight Italian, and seemed to have the upper hand early on. Unlike the first game, he spent a considerable amount of time off the board, walking into the players' lounge twice and simply sitting on the chair sipping on a water. Gukesh, meanwhile, didn't leave the table at all early on, and focused hard on his defence.
It worked too, and with deliberate self-control Gukesh avoided any rash mistakes - either a blunder or a series of careless aggressive moves. It was what cost him in game 1 and it appeared he was determined not to give Ding even the slightest opening today.
In the mid-game, Ding avoided a clear trade of rooks to ensure there was no danger but the more the game wore on and the more solid Gukesh's defence was, Ding seemed to make more defensive moves too.
Then when Ding moved his knight back to e2, the next few moves saw both players play a repetition: moving the same knight back and forth (moves 21-22 and 22-23) to play out a draw by repetition, Ding offering the draw to his young opponent.
It was an interesting choice considering there were more than 35 minutes left on the clock (for both), but Ding seems to have accepted the half-point versus a trade-off of more energy consumption and a slightly complicated endgame. The fact that the world championship is a 14-game mammoth marathon would also have factored into his decision.
Gukesh, meanwhile, will want to capitalize on the indecision Ding showed with that first knight retreat and could well come out all guns blazing with white on Wednesday.
We will have all the live updates for you tomorrow, and you can relive the events of today right here in our live blog: