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The words describing early losers winning in the end are not meant to dampen the joy of Ding's fans, but are rather a cautionary tale. Listening to one of the live streams with commentary (I found four streams running with teams of animated and interesting commentators), one of them with GM Daniel Naroditsky noted the same thing, citing 1886 when the first world champion, Wilhelm Steinitz, started a title defense with the abysmal score of 1-4 against Zukertort before turning it around. It isn't that it is not true, though Steinitz did actually win the very first game in that match before losing the next four, it is just that you don't need to go all the way back to the time of horse-driven carriages to find such examples.
The legendary Bobby Fischer did not exactly have the smoothest start when he began his assault on the world title with two losses. Granted, the second was by default, but the first was entirely his fault.
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In hindsight, knowing the final result and of course the value of Elo rating, which was still in the process of achieving acceptance at that time, it seems like it was a foregone conclusion he would win before the full 24 games had been played out. However, at the time it was anything but. Fischer was rumored to already be planning to abandon the match altogether and head home Stateside.
How about the absolutely insane 1984 match? Young Garry Kasparov was actually the Elo favorite against veteran World Champion Anatoly Karpov, though it is easy to forget this. It did not start with Kasparov tap dancing on Karpov's grave either. In fact, after just nine games, Karpov was up 4-0.
Kasparov took advantage of the odd rules in place requiring the winner to be the first to reach six wins, regardless of draws. (Point of trivia: these were the same conditions as the 1927 match between Capablanca and Alekhine).
The 1984 match was grueling and lasted several months | Photo: ITAR-TASS
Kasparov set out to exploit this and what ensued was the chess equivalent of the trench wars of World War I, dragging the bout out to over 40 games, by which time Karpov began to fall apart from sheer exhaustion.
Even Ding Liren spent his entire 2023 match chasing down Ian Nepomniachtchi from behind, so if anyone knows the emotional impact and fortitude needed, it is him. He will be delighted to have struck the first blow, but he will be under no illusions as to what this means. What he knows for sure is that his fears of 'The Great Indian Massacre' can be put to rest.
Perhaps the biggest question on many people's minds is how it happened at all. Wasn't Gukesh being touted as an overwhelming favorite? A close friend messaged me when the game started, "The massacre has started". A few hours later he was left blinking in confusion when it became clear Ding Liren was almost certainly going to win it.
It may come as somewhat ironic that one of the people to predict this outcome was actually Magnus Carlsen. Ironic because, as posted in a previous article, he had just finished giving a full evaluation of the chess skills of both Ding (now) and Gukesh, and the evaluations had been none too flattering for the Chinese player. Yet in spite of all this, just before the Olympiad he had predicted that the first game, or at least the first winning chances, would go to Ding despite not wavering from his stance that Gukesh was the clear favorite to win the match. How does that make any sense?
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His former second, Jon Ludwig Hammer, was the first to focus on this and explain these two seemingly contradictory statements.
He noted that when Magnus made this comment, it could not possibly be in view of the actual play and results of the two players over the previous year, but had to be based on his knowledge and experience of the extreme stress and pressure the World Championship places on you. It is massive for any player, but especially so for a first-timer. Magnus Carlsen himself came into the title fight against Anand as the Elo favorite, yet somehow managed to slip and drop his knight on the board. Even if his face and body language did not make it obvious to viewers watching it, there was no question this was the result of frayed nerves.
Magnus dropped his knight in the game during his first match against Anand
The matter of settling your nerves in such high-profile events is common and certainly not unique to chess. This is not a matter of lack of proper mental preparation by Gukesh's team, since ultimately there is literally nothing that can really prepare you for it. It is a trial by fire that no speech or book can completely overcome, you just have to live it. On the plus side, the young Indian has shown exceptional poise and nerves of steel throughout his career, and Magnus himself highlighted that Gukesh has consistently managed to bring his best self to the big occasions. There seems no doubt he will recover from this setback soon, if not already in the next game, but that's not the good news. The really good news for chess fans around the world is that we have a match!
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