World Chess Championship: Gukesh vs Ding Liren live updates, score, comments, game 1 news

After all the construction, the time has finally come. The youngest challenger a World Chess Championship has ever seen takes on him by taking on one of the best players the game has seen in the last decade: Ding Liren. But can India’s Dommaraju Gukesh really do it?

We’ll know soon enough because it’s time D Gukesh vs Ding Liren. The long, long World Cup starts today at 2:30 p.m when they get it Game 1 in progress, with Gukesh playing with white.

Now, before the game Liren may have downplayed his chances and the contrasts between his and Gukesh’s behavior were quite clear, but no one becomes world champion without being exceptional at what they do. And thing is just that. Another young Indian grandmaster, R Praggnanandhaa, might have told ESPN’s Aaditya Narayan that playing with white first gives Gukesh an advantage, but when it comes to this big stage, things are not so black and knows what India’s young superstar chess players experienced before.

The head-to-head race does not favor young Gukesh (as one would expect given his age), as Ding has won twice and drawn once in three classical games, but as the FIDE Candidates Tournament and the Chess Olympiad showed quite clearly, Gukesh is a player who is improving with every passing day.

Join us here for complete coverage of this game that promises to be an absolute blast. Aaditya is in Singapore and he will help us ensure you get the complete experience with a healthy dose of sights and sounds straight from the venue. The live blog appears directly below: