Engine Analysis of Games 4-6 from the World Championship

As always, I highly recommend checking out the annotations provided by Lichess. They are a good addition to the overview I try to give of the games.

Game 4

The fourth game was definitely the calmest of the games I’m looking at here. Ding decided to play the Reti but apparently wasn’t in a mood to keep the game complex.

The win probability didn’t get very high for any player during the game. There was some tension in the position, but Ding went for exchanges and this reduced the win probabilities for both players.
The piece activity in game 4 also doesn’t show an advantage for any of the players:

The sharpness also reflects the general dullness of the game:

While there was play in the position out of the opening, Ding made it less double edged with his move 16.Nf3. After that, there wasn’t much going on according to LC0.
The clock times show that Gukesh probably got caught a bit off guard by Ding’s choice to play 2.e3.

However, Ding soon caught up on the clock and neither player got into time trouble.

Game 5

Game 5 had much more to offer than game 4. This can be immediately seen from the WDL graph:

Ding played again the French Defence and the spike in Gukesh’s win probability shows that Leela isn’t a big fan of that choice. Gukesh went a bit wrong with 23.dxe5which gave Ding good winning chances. But he didn’t seem too interested in playing for a win and the position soon petered out to a draw.
The piece activity graph is interesting for this game.

Gukesh played 17.g4 which weakened his kingside structure in exchange for piece activity. But his piece activity soon dropped below Black’s activity and so Gukesh was left with an inferior position.
The sharpness again shows a general trend for the match:

While Gukesh is mostly trying to keep the middle game sharp, Ding often wants to simplify. But it’s interesting that usually Ding’s opening choices are often considered to be quite sharp by LC0. It would be interesting to know if this is part of Ding’s game plan.
The time expenditure by both players was similar in this game.

It’s interesting to see that Ding usually takes a very long think out of the opening. In most games he played very quickly until he takes 20+ minutes on a single move. Gukesh in contrast has more 5-10 minute thinks early on.
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Game 6

The story of game 6 fits very well with the previous games: Gukesh tries to keep the game going, Ding gets a good position but then Ding wants to simplify the position.

Ding got again an advantage in the middle game and since Gukesh’s win probability was quite low, Ding could have played for more with little risk. Instead Ding decided to simplify the game.
The piece activity shows where Ding’s advantage came from:

In the major piece ending, which started at move 20, Ding had his queen centralised and more active pieces than Gukesh.
The sharpness shows again the same picture as in the games before:

Ding increases the sharpness in the opening but after that he mostly tries to reduce the sharpness of the position. Gukesh on the other hand wants to keep the game sharp.
Ding also stuck to his usual thinking pattern.

Ding played the opening quickly and then took a very long think on move 20. After that the players were roughly even on time, with both getting a bit low on the clock shortly before the time control.

Conclusion

These 3 games all tell a similar story: Ding gets good positions because Gukesh wants to keep the games complicated. But Ding decides to bail out without trying to press for a win.
It’s difficult to say who this situation favours. One might say it’s a bad sign that Ding doesn’t play for the win. Or one might say that it’s a good sign that he gets good positions. Either way, I’m looking forward to seeing how this match continues
As always, let me know what you think about the games and the graphs.

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If you missed my post about the first three games, check it out here.