“He showed fighting spirit in his opening choice,” Carlsen said of Gukesh’s gameplay in his recap for Take Take Take. “After that, yeah of course he was he was trying to win but, who wouldn’t? Like he didn’t have a single moment in the game where there was any risk to his position at all so I think anybody practically would try and win in this situation.”

“You know, he did his job very well for a long time, he found a nice idea in the French defense he put Ding under a lot of pressure and with a combination of skill and luck Ding managed to hold which was a quite likely outcome. I think Gukesh did a lot things right of course, none of them are perfect or close to it but you don’t expect anything close to perfection in this situation it’s too nervy,” the former five-time champion from Norway added.

When Gukesh played 31.Ne4, Ding was under immense pressure, having just under eight minutes to make 10 moves. He planted both his hands on the back of his head in dismay and appeared visibly nervous. “When I saw that move, I almost gave up. I didn’t find any move to survive, to stay in the game. But in the end, I found a nice resource,” Ding admitted at the press conference.

Carlsen said that he has been in similar positions in the past too, and a nice move can appear out of nowhere in times like these. He added that Game 13 was a good contest overall. “I mean we can definitely point to mistakes and certain semi-missed chances at the very least but this was not a bad game of chess, it was just a very complicated position that both players handled relatively decent,” Carlsen said.