World Chess championship heats up as reigning champion from China defends title

CGTN Europe

The World Chess Championship is underway in Singapore as reigning champion Ding Liren defends his title against Indian teenager Gukesh Dommaraju.  CGTN’s Patrick Fok has the latest.  #chess #worldchesschampionship #dingliren #gukeshdommaraju  📸FIDE

Transcript

00:00Welcome to the FIDE World Championship 2024.

00:04After a rousing welcome to introduce the game, it's down to the serious stuff and calm inside the players' cube.

00:11This has been billed as a battle between Asian giants.

00:1532-year-old Ding Li Ren of China comes into the challenge in patchy form.

00:20His opponent, Gukesh Domaraju from India, is a rising star playing with the maturity of someone well beyond his years.

00:28Fans from back home that have travelled to Singapore are bullish about his chances.

00:33You know, in our country, these days chess is flowing in the veins and arteries of an entire generation of school-going children.

00:40They are just enjoying chess like anything and following it.

00:43And Gukesh is a big hero. He's just a teenager and he's a star in our country.

00:47Should he prevail, Gukesh would become the youngest classical world champion ever.

00:53The winner will walk away with a prize of two and a half million dollars.

00:57I think it's super exciting. And of course, it's the richest tournament in the world, so lots of excitement.

01:02Chess has enjoyed considerable growth in recent years.

01:06Many people turn to the game in particular during the COVID-19 pandemic.

01:10But the surge in the number of people playing chess has mainly been online.

01:15The world's biggest chess platform, chess.com, now boasts 190 million users worldwide.

01:23That's compared to about 51 million at the start of 2020.

01:27The boom in online chess has raised questions over the championship format and whether it still represents the pinnacle of the sport.

01:35Added to that, the absence of Magnus Carlsen looms large over this event.

01:40The Norwegian master vacated the world championship title in 2022 after dominating for over a decade.

01:47Some say this is no longer a match for the title of the best player in the world.

01:53But I still think that there's an appeal to become the world chess champion.

01:56It is very unclear what's going to happen if Magnus plays Gukesh right now, I would say, or with Ding.

02:02Actually, it's super unclear.

02:05But, you know, there's still this hunger for the top young chess players to one day to become the world chess champion.

02:12So I don't see that going away. I don't see the prestige of that being sort of diluted over time.

02:18Still, the championship clash in Singapore brings plenty of buzz.

02:22And no matter who wins, the best of 14 games event will surely generate more interest in the sport in the massive markets of India and China.

02:32Patrick Fock, CGTN, Singapore.

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