D Gukesh is on the scoreboard in the world chess championship 2024, playing out a draw in game 2 that both he and his opponent Ding Liren were only too happy to take after 23 moves, and around three hours of playing time. Gukesh played a solid defensive game, and even though he was never really in a position to threaten the reigning champion and go for the win, he was wary of pushing too hard and leaves his defences exposed.

“This early, with black, was nowhere close to a must-win,” Gukesh said. “So, I was never going to do anything stupid.”

He’s clearly in this for the long haul and knows that overcommitting too early might be it for this match. Like Magnus Carlsen said on Take Take Take after game 1, Gukesh couldn’t have won the world championship with a win in game 2, but he certainly could’ve lost it with an L. That showed in the way he played, and his demeanour once they reached the middle-game.

The position was at a stage where the engines showed a slight edge to Ding, with the white pieces, but he didn’t really press home the advantage and chose to preserve physical and mental energy rather than exerting himself into what could’ve been a complicated endgame if he wanted to attempt to squeeze a full advantage out of that position.

Ding had earlier surprised Gukesh with his opening, which led to the 18-year-old spending more than 30 minutes on making his fifth move of the match. Ding had never played 1.e4 (queen’s pawn) with the white pieces in last year’s world championship match against Ian Nepomniachtchi, and generally isn’t known to prefer that. In an attempt to catch Gukesh off-guard, he did something different, just as he had done in game 1.

However, unlike Monday, Gukesh found a solid structure in response, with Ding being concerned about a central black knight.

Especially during the opening, Ding went through his moves rapidly, a clear sign of his preparation, and he played the first ten moves almost instantly. Unlike in game 1, when he went into the players’ lounge only once he had the game wrapped up after four hours of chess, Ding used the lounge three times within the opening 30 minutes of this one. It was perhaps also to leave Gukesh alone with his thoughts on the board, as he tried to wriggle a way out of that opening surprise to come out with a solid position.

Ding went on to say that he was happy with the draw, and that his plan was to play carefully. It was a similar reaction from Gukesh as well, who was happy with the way he bounced back from the loss in game 1.

“I was feeling a little up and down. I was slightly worse in the middle game. I thought I had misplayed,” Ding said. So, at the first opportunity to pick up the half a point available, he did.

At the point the draw was offered, Ding was getting more jittery and fidgety on the board, which Gukesh would have noticed. It was the kind of position from which the Gukesh we know might have played on and pushed in to gain some kind of advantage, like in the Olympiad against Wei Yi. However, the occasion and the circumstances meant that he would’ve been happy to just get himself on the scoreboard.

Additionally, it would’ve taken some time for him to recover from the setback of the early loss, but Gukesh said his team had prepared him for that eventuality. He said they went over it, but quickly moved past the game to move on to preparations for the second one.

“I don’t think it was too bad yesterday. I felt fresh and confident. It was a few tactical misses, which can happen. So today wasn’t about putting the breaks [on his opponent],” Gukesh said.

He plays with white pieces on Wednesday, and being a game down, he will be expected to create chances to win and level up the match. Gukesh isn’t yet feeling that pressure though. “I will just try to play a good game. The way to win is to play good games,” he said.

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: