Winning ploy: Play long, tire Ding out

BENGALURU: Grzegorz Gajewski was on his way to dinner on Thursday night, running through lines for Friday's possible tiebreaks when Ding Liren blundered and lost in what was seemingly a drawn game.

- Susan Ninan

The match ended abruptly and at 18, Gukesh Dommaraju turned the 18th world champion. It was the pay-off of a strategy that Team Gukesh, led by Gajewski, had put in place.

"Ding was a bit of a mystery coming into this match... During the match, every day, we were learning new things about him—the way he plays, also the way he feels and evaluates positions," the 39-year-old Pole told HT on Friday. "Actually, quite quickly, we came up with this idea that it's best to make Ding play for as long as possible, every single game, ideally six hours, just to exhaust him. We assumed that in the long run, this strategy just has to pay off. It eventually did."