In the World Championship, Gukesh established mental edge over China’s Liren by winning the third game.

Singapore. When India’s young chess player D Gukesh will challenge China’s Ding Liren for the fourth game in the World Chess Championship on Friday after a day’s rest, his morale will be boosted by the victory in the third game of this 14-game match. Must have happened. 18 year old Gukesh performed brilliantly in the third round and registered his first win of this championship. There are still 11 matches left in the championship being played under classic time control. Earlier, Gukesh had to face defeat in the initial match while the second match was a draw.

After three games, both the players now have equal one and a half points each. Gukesh, who faced defeat in the first game, has clearly raised the level of his game and shown better preparation. Liren had to bear the brunt of a mistake in counting the moves in the third game. He took a lot of time during this period which made things complicated for him. By the thirteenth move Gukesh had a lead of one hour and had spent only four minutes. Liren had spent an hour and six minutes on the other side. There is no time extension for 40 of the first 120 minutes of the game. Liren was affected by the complexity of the match in the middle and Gukesh increased the pressure on him with precise moves.

Gukesh adopted the same strategy as former world champion Vladimir Kramnik of Russia against India’s Arjun Erigesi in a rapid match. Erigesi narrowly escaped defeat by drawing the match while Gukesh took advantage of Liren’s simple mistakes and won. Liren had only two minutes left for the last nine moves and only 10 seconds left for the last six moves. In the end he had no time left. After registering victory playing with white pieces, Gukesh said in the press conference that it feels very good. I was happy with my game the last two days. Played better today. Looked good on the board and managed to defeat his opponent.

(Inputs- PTI)