Duda opens the game up in classical fashion, going for the most tried and tested queen's pawn system: the queen's gambit!
Gukesh declines the pawn offer, going for the QGD, or queen's gambit declined.
Duda remains unconcerned about his 'hanging' pawn. Typically in such positions, it's quite easy for the White side to get the pawn back if it's captured. The most direct way of doing so would be to give a check with the queen on the left hand side.
Developing the king's knight, and lending support to the center.
Classical development for now, stepping out the remaining knight to its most natural square.
A somewhat rare continuation
Until now, it's been very much mainline territory for both sides. However, this move is only the fifth most popular option in the position. So it would seem that Gukesh is the first to uncork a small surprise early on.
Setting up the possibility of a quick trade of pawns, followed by an expansion on the queenside. That would allow Gukesh to speedily develop his own light-squared bishop along the diagonal.
Duda cuts out the plan, as now he's ready to meet the possible pawn trade by recapturing with his pawn.
Gukesh steps the pawn forward only one square, still with the idea of planting his bishop on the long diagonal.
It's a good moment to initiate the trade of pawns, since that will mean that whatever Gukesh does, he'll be left with a pawn firmly locked in place on that square. And that will hurt his bishop if he does indeed #fianchetto it.
Both sides complete their minor piece development on the queenside. It's true that neither bishop is overly active as they are 'staring at their own pawn'. But in that sense, things balance out for each player.
Duda completes the fianchetto of his other bishop, and gets ready to castle soon.
I like this move from Gukesh! He seems to be signaling that he may well castle on the left hand side. If Duda ends up castling to the right, then the World Champion will get exactly the kind of fighting 'opposite side castling' position that will offer him strong winning chances!
Duda seems to be saying to Gukesh: "I know that you're thinking of castling to the left. So let me prepare a fast attack just in case you do so!"
Gukesh responds in kind!
With his last move, Duda was flirting with the possibility of an early strike on the left hand side, the flank where Gukesh is likely to try and safeguard his king. With his own move, Gukesh prepares for a fast strike on the opposite flank!
Duda slides his queen over one square, in order to support a bishop advance. His goal is to seek out the trade of his passive piece, for Gukesh's active counterpart!
Gukesh senses the urgency, and jumps in with his knight. This move kills Duda's plan of trading bishops, since now he has to guard against the tension between the knights.
Duda understandably goes for the knight trade, but now Gukesh is going to be able to take back with the pawn. And in doing so, he'll be securing an early initiative as he grabs space while pushing Duda's remaining knight back.
Duda drops back with the knight, and threatens to capture the pawn in the center. But this is really not looking good at all for the Polish grandmaster, as now Gukesh has a free hand to continue to storm the kingside!
Gukesh doesn't hesitate. The opening has gone incredibly well for the World Champion, as he's got more space, well-placed pieces, and a fast kingside attack!
Duda follows through on his idea. There's not too much else to do for him other than to try and trade off his most passive piece. But a single piece trade isn't really going to solve his problems. He's now got less space in the center and kingside, with no advantage of his own to offset this imbalance.
Gukesh improves his queen
The move comes with a sneaky threat. Given the chance, Gukesh intends on trading pawns and exchanging rooks on the right-hand file. If he could do this, at the end of the sequence he could then invade with his queen and hit the bishop!
It's crucial to defend the central pawn. If that one were to be captured, it would be taken with check and a nasty fork against king and bishop.
Gukesh correctly recaptures with the pawn. Duda has to be very careful here, because now that the file has opened up, Gukesh will be hoping to seize control of it with his rook. So the next move is crucial for Duda here, if he is to avoid his position from deteriorating fast.
Duda steps away from the open file, anticipating that Gukesh was threatening to bring his rook in. But now he hands over the turn to his opponent, who could even consider pushing the pawn forward on the right hand side and disturbing Duda's already flimsy piece coordination.
It's hard to understand why Gukesh has gone for this option. Now it seems like Duda can jump in with the knight and win a pawn by force. It's not the end of the world for Gukesh, but he has spoiled most of his advantage by allowing this.
The double attack will cost Gukesh a pawn, though his space advantage and better piece coordination means that he's equal at the very least.
Gukesh defends the critical pawn
He can't afford to let this one drop, since knight takes pawn would come with check, and with a game-winning fork against king and bishop.
Anything else wouldn't have made sense, as then Gukesh would have been able to defend the pawn and keep all his other trumps. Now the position is super imbalanced, with Duda having extra material while Gukesh enjoys the better coordination and kingside attacking chances!
Gukesh spots the right plan. This stops Duda from pushing his own pawn up to defend the knight and, more importantly, it sets up the possibility of bringing his light-squared bishop to a new and far stronger diagonal in the future.
Duda takes the pawn. It looks a little ugly to split your own pawn chain in this way, but it's a worthwhile price to pay in order to remove the pawn tension that was playing in Gukesh's favor.
Gukesh takes back
It's the most natural move by far, but interestingly the computer was signaling that it would have been better for Gukesh to have played two pawns down and simply castled instead! Now that he's moved his rook, that is no longer on the cards. So Gukesh's king may feel a bit less safe than it could have.
Duda might be going a little wrong here. He had a great chance to push his pawn forward, and threaten to continue advancing it in order to shut down Gukesh's bishop along its desired diagonal. But now, it's too late for that plan.
Now it's too late for Duda to contain Gukesh's bishop! The point is that if Duda pushes his pawn now, then Gukesh is in time to invade with the piece and anchor it on the main outpost. But had Duda not wasted time moving his rook, Gukesh wouldn't have had the time for this.
Duda pushes the pawn anyway, as he looks to carve out a potentially dangerous passed pawn for himself on the left hand flank.
Duda down to just one move!
He must drop his bishop back. Anything else and Gukesh would have a winning advantage!
Duda does find the right move, though he really didn't have too many attractive alternatives so it's no surprise he was able to stay on track.
All of a sudden, Duda is presented with a golden chance! His rook is under fire, but perhaps Gukesh has overlooked that Duda can sacrifice it and push his pawn forward on the queenside! The point is that if Gukesh then takes the rook, Duda would end up with an extremely dangerous passed pawn!
Gukesh is in trouble here! He now has nothing better than to drop his bishop back, but now Duda is going to be left with a monster passed pawn on the left flank.
Gukesh continues to lose the thread of the position. He sets up a nasty capture, but the problem is that Duda can easily parry the threat and will then come in with even stronger threats of his own!
Duda finds the best continuation. Now there are no longer any threats against his king, while taking the rook runs into a huge problem for Gukesh as Duda intends on bringing hi remaining rook forward and setting up a threat of mate on the next move!
Gukesh saw nothing better than to take the rook, but now Duda is able to create a devastating threat of checkmate. While Gukesh can stop it by bringing his queen to defend this point, the problem is that if Duda finds one more precise move, Gukesh will be completely lost!
The moment of truth!
Duda must find this tricky-to-spot bishop move, capitalizing on the fact that Gukesh cannot take the piece with his queen as she is tied down to the defense of the pawn (to stop checkmate). Gukesh now has to pin his hopes on Duda slipping up and taking the hanging bishop instead.
A huge mistake from the Polish number 1! All of a sudden, Gukesh is back in the game, due to the fact that now he can take the pawn with his rook and create a devastating threat of his own!
Duda looks to exchange queens, knowing that otherwise his king would come under too much fire. The game is now objectively balanced, but the play will remain extremely sharp for the next five or six moves at least. So it's very likely that one player is going to go wrong...but who?!
Gukesh's idea is to recapture with his pawn after the queen trade. That's going to be tricky for Duda to deal with, since then that pawn will be able to coordinate with his rook and knight to set up mating nets and other powerful threats!
Duda must not hesitate, and immediately push his dangerous pawn forward. But from a human perspective, he might be feeling the heat here. Gukesh feels most at home in such sharp calculation-heavy positions, and a single slip could cost Duda the full point. That's already happened to him once from a winning position against Alireza Firouzja some rounds back. Will lightning strike twice today?!
Duda finds the only move to hold the balance. As if things weren't tricky enough already, both players are now down to just a few minutes on the clock. Things are going to have to be decided in what is effectively a blitz game!
Once again, Duda finds himself having to play one move and one move only. He has to drive his knight forward and onto the final rank. And he must to do so with a concrete follow-up in mind: to capture the pawn with check on the move after that!
As you can see from the arrows, Duda is going to have to thread the needle here tactically in order to hang on!
So far he's been up to the task in any moment where he absolutely had to find a specific move. Now it's Gukesh's turn to make sure he doesn't stumble. He needs to play knight takes pawn, in order to set up a deadly checkmate threat on the next move!
Gukesh sets up the threat of mate!
Now that his knight takes away the left-hand square for the enemy king, he's got the threat of pushing his pawn with checkmate!
This is the key idea that Duda needed to have spotted some moves back. The point is that Gukesh cannot take the knight, due to the fact that then Duda would reply by queening his pawn with check.
After the forced sequence, now Duda is ready to eliminate the dangerous pawn.
Gukesh quickly eliminates the dangerous bishop, as this was a piece that could have moved in with a deadly check if he had ignored it.
Gukesh will be hoping that Duda goes wrong in this endgame, as he is after all an #exchange down. But with the strong advanced pawns, it's a draw with best play.
Nice technique!
I think with this move, Duda practically secures the draw. The point is that he's threatening to push his central pawn forward. Gukesh likely has to start trading off pawns and give up one of his rooks in the process. That will leave a dead drawn rook + knight vs rook + pawns position on the board.
Given the strength of the pawn, Gukesh will almost certainly just continue by giving checks here if allowed. The only question is whether Duda will try to get more ambitious and seek to march his king up the board to try and create some winning chances.
The moment of truth for Duda
He's going to have to decide if he wants to take any more risk today, and move his king up forward to try to escape the string of checks. If he doesn't, I don't think Gukesh is the one that is going to try to keep the game alive, and so we could well be in the closing stages of the game now.
Duda drops his king back. And with this, we can say that the game is about to be over -- a fighting draw!
A wild game!
Both of today's players will very much deserve a break during tomorrow's rest day!
The game started off rather poorly for Jan-Krzysztof Duda, who went for unorthodox play in the opening that soon backfired as an inspired Gukesh found just the right way to set up his pawns and pieces, and was soon bearing down on Duda's position both in the center and kingside.
However, at the critical moment still quite early into the middlegame, Gukesh found himself allowing some mistakes to creep into his game. And when presented with the chance, Duda snatched it, and all of a sudden found himself able to win a pawn and make it anyone's game once again.
After this, Duda continued to outplay Gukesh. And with the pressure mounting, the World Champion found himself adding to his earlier mistakes and going for an attack on Duda's kingside rook that he could not really afford.
Duda, for his part, found the right tactical solutions almost all the way. But just when all he needed was one last precise move to practically seal the deal, it was his turn to blunder. And with it, his winning advantage disappeared in a flash!
There were still some minor twists and turns from here, but both players kept finding the right moves from here on out, and so in the end few soldiers remained on the battlefield and neither side saw anything better than to play for a draw by repetition.
That was a fun one! Hope you enjoyed it, whether you are a Gukesh fan or a Duda fan, or indeed a neutral. Catch you on Sunday when the 2025 Sinquefield Cup returns for round 6!
Will the World Champion push for a win before the rest day?
It's been a topsy-turvy event for the young Indian champion, who arrives at the fifth round on a 50% score. Unlike a player like Wesley So, who is on the same points with four draws in succession, the path of Gukesh Dommaraju has been a far more rocky one. He lost to Praggnanandhaa in the first game, before bouncing back in round two with a convincing win over the luckless Abdusattorov.
Like Duda, his last couple of games have ended peacefully. And now, he will find himself hoping that he can find a way to score a win here to set himself up well for the closing half of the tournament. After all, there's four places up for grabs in September's GCT Final, and he'll be hoping that he is able to claim one of these seats. To keep his chances alive however, he's going to have to rack up a lot of points in the remaining games in St.Louis!
Should be an exciting one. So far Duda has not been playing the most ambitious chess, but Gukesh does have a way of spicing things up on the chessboard! Let's see if he gets his way as we prepare to kick things off in round 5 of the Sinquefield Cup!