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Chinese Grandmaster Ding Liren has opened up on his loss to India's D Gukesh at the World Chess Championship 2024 in Singapore last week. Ding, who was the defending champion, made a costly error in the decisive Game 14, allowing Gukesh to become the youngest ever world champion. Following his defeat to Gukesh, Ding was accused of deliberately losing the match by Russian Chess Federation chief Andrei Filatov. Russian news agency TASS quoted Filatov asking the International Chess Federation (FIDE) to open a probe and investigate the result.
Former world champions Magnus Carlsen and Vladimir Kramnik had also questioned the quality of chess on display during the whole course of the 14-game tie Ding and Gukesh.
Amid criticism, Ding has defended himself and Gukesh, insisting that the quality of the games was not so low.
"Yes, I tried my best in the match and you could see my usage of time. I used a large amount of time in the opening phase when I was not familiar with the position. I tried to figure out what is going on. Or what's the idea behind the novelty. Or how to play my pieces. And sometimes i did a good job and sometimes I didn't find a clear way to develop," Ding told ChessBase India.
"But in every game, his (Gukesh) time would eventually catch up my time after some long thought by him. So I can say that I played some high quality moves when I spent a lot of time. The quality of the game were not so low. Even when I was low on time, I also played some good moves with less time," he added.
Meanwhile, Gukesh secured the requisite 7.5 points as against 6.5 of his Chinese rival after winning the 14th and last classical time control game of the match that seemed headed for a draw for most part. As winner, he will walk away with a whopping USD 1.3 million (approx Rs 11.03 crore) from the 2.5 million prize purse.