[ceronman]

It was. But he had 9 minutes vs more than an hour for Gukesh. The entire match has been Ding defending miraculously, I thought it was a matter of time before he eventually failed. The fact that it happened on the last moves of the last game, it's definitely hard for Ding, but fair for Gukesh IMO.

[nebulous1]

Overall I agree, the entire match seemed to be Ding defending. Gukesh kind of failed to capitalise the whole way through though.

wrt the time, this is kind of a bread and butter endgame. Ding shouldn't have blundered here with 10 minutes on the clock. Highly unlikely he would have blundered this two years ago.

[ronald_raygun]

Well it sounds like an instance of "your keys are always in the last place you look, because then you stop looking"

[timerol]

This was game 14, they were tied almost the whole way, and this was the only time Gukesh won with the black pieces.

Before the match, the expectation was that Gukesh would take an early lead and never look back, with the match ending before game 14. This morning, the expectation would be that Ding would make an easy draw with white (as he has done in 5 of his games as white already, winning the other), and it would go to tiebreaks.

Having the championship decided by a decisive final classical game is pretty rare. The last time it happened was 2010.

[qup]

The match was more than one game

[8note]

ding was attacking though. it skuat crazy that he was looking to play for a draw with the white pieces, when he was in a great position to play for the win earlier, before he forced a trade of all the pieces.

ding may have lost for a blunder late in the game, but i think he lost the game and match early, when he traded down to try to play for a draw.

gukesh played every game for a win

[endorphine]

I don't get the "fair" argument. Would it be unfair if Ding did not blunder the rook? How so?

[kelipso]

Presumably the classical world championship should be determined by classical chess games, and this was the last one before the shorter tiebreak games. Ding looked like he would’ve started losing more if there were more classical games, who knows though.

[selectnull]

Agree completely.