Gukesh vs. Ding, Game 7 Opening: Move orders!

The seventh game of the 2024 Chess World Championship sees Gukesh (White) taking a page out of Ding Liren’s (Black) book, as he starts with 1. Nf3. Ding immediately seemed slightly surprised, and took a couple of minutes to decide on his setup. It was looking like a strange start, but after five moves each it returned to a very large number of Master games. Having said that, 7. Re1?! is highly unexpected, and probably grades as dubious, objectively, because it gives Black a good moment for …dxc4 when White is already needing to argue compensation.

It’s hard to say in the moment whether Gukesh is intending some kind of preparation, when he barely took a minute for his first seven moves, or whether he may have misremembered something and played a typical move at the wrong time. Naroditsky was doing his best to draw comparisons to similar known positions on the broadcast while Ding took 28 minutes minutes to contemplate, and indeed captured on c4. The 1000 or so high-level Lichess games after Re1 suggest a clear edge for Black, as the second player scores 56% after …dxc4, yet Gukesh once again replied instantly with e4.

The first 8 moves of game 7 are given below. Follow the game live on Lichess, or on stream with commentary by Grandmasters Peter Leko and Daniel Naroditsky.