World Championship: Gukesh draws his fourth consecutive game against Liren, could not take advantage of white pieces
Gukesh could not win despite being in a good position. He had to play a draw in front of Liren's strong defense. Gukesh was one pawn ahead till the end.
Indian Grandmaster D Gukesh, who is challenging China's Ding Liren for the World championship title, could not win despite playing with white pieces in the seventh game. The fourth consecutive game between the two was a draw. With this, half of the 14-round final is over and both players are tied at 3.5-3.5 points. The seventh game lasted for 72 moves. This was the longest game of the final so far. Gukesh could not win despite being in a good position. He had to play a draw in front of Liren's strong defense. Gukesh was one pawn ahead till the end.
Liren had only seven seconds left for the 40th move and he made a huge mistake during this. Hungarian Grandmaster Suzanne Polgar said that this was a huge mistake by Liren and Gukesh was in a winning position, but instead of moving towards victory, Gukesh brought back his bishop (camel). Liren was not in a good position throughout the match, but he showed tremendous defense in the last game. At one point, even Gukesh was caught in the time pressure. He made the 56th move when only two seconds were left on the clock. Gukesh remained one pawn ahead till the end, but he could not take advantage of it.
The seventh round of the match lasted for five hours and 20 minutes. The sixth game between the two also lasted for more than four hours and 46 moves. During the middle game, Gukesh was in a huge lead in terms of position and time. At one point, it seemed that Liren would again lose the game based on time. He had to play 15 moves in 16 minutes. In the 40th move, he had only seven seconds left to avoid defeat. In the third game too, Liren lost based on time.
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