Another draw after both Ding, Gukesh miss winning chances

The 51-move thrilling Game 8 leaves both players tied at 4-4 with six more classical games to go

- Susan Ninan

Here's what we know eight games into the World Championship match. This isn't the Ding Liren the world was expecting to show up to defend his title and what we have on our hands is a match that's crackled to life. In Game 8 on Wednesday, momentum switched sides in a tense battle and we had a draw after 51 moves of thrilling chess.

The match between Ding and challenger D Gukesh remains tied at 4-4, with six more classical games remaining.

After Tuesday's five-hour plus duel, Ding arrived to play with the White pieces and started off with a different first move - 1.c4, the English Opening, than he had played earlier in this match. Gukesh responded with 1.e5 and the Reverse Sicilian was soon on the board. Black developed its dark-squared bishop to b4 early on, provoked Nd5 and then fell back to e7. On move 7, Gukesh took Ding by surprise with a seemingly complex f6 novelty, setting up a pawn triangle. Ding was thrown off and retreated into thought for over 20 minutes.