World Chess Championship 2024 all you need to know as Liren and Dommaraju do battle

A prize fund of £2m and over half a million people watching live makes the World Chess Championship lucrative business.

The event, held this year in Singapore, got underway on November 25 - as more than 500,000 tuned in to watch reigning champion Ding Liren of China defeat 18-year-old Indian grandmaster Gukesh Dommaraju after 42 moves in the first game of the event. Action is now underway all the way until December 13, as the two do battle for the most important prize in chess.

Dommaraju goes into the event as the challenger, but is the favourite amongst many pundits - with Liren having not won a classical game prior to the event starting since January after battling off-field problems. The two will do battle in a best of 14 games format, with a tie break if required, over the next three weeks at a luxurious resort in Singapore where a small number of spectators will also be glued to every move with the sport enjoying a surge in popularity in recent years.

Ding Liren is a 32-year-old grandmaster, the event’s reigning champion and a huge star in his native China. He won his first Chinese Chess Championship at the age of 16, making him the youngest to ever do so, and went on to make more history in the 2017 and 2019 Chess World Cup where he became the first player in history to reach the finals twice in a row.

As well as his two team gold medals and one individual gold medal at the Chess Olympiads (plus one team gold medal at the World Team Championships), Ding held a 100-game unbeaten streak in top-level chess competition—the longest in history at the time.

However in 2023 he took a nine-month break after becoming world champion, admitting that he was struggling with his mental health and the pressure of the sport. With