Ding Liren began his reign as the 17th world chess champion by setting a new record for the 49 title matches in the historic competition dating back to 1886. The modest 30-year-old was the first player ever to win the crown leading only in the final game, defeating Ian Nepomniachtchi in their fourth rapid tie-breaker following their 7-7 score in the regular classical series.
Ding also did it with a defining move. His 46…Rg6!, boldly playing for the win by self-pinning his rook, his second most powerful piece, against his own king, shocked the grandmaster commentators as well as his Russian opponent. It was also the right decision in the context of the match, which was about to go into five-minute blitz, a format where Ding only had an inactive over-the-board rating, and where his few online competitive games had been marred by disconnections and the need to start play in the middle of the night to match his European and US opponents.
Magnus Carlsen, in the moment of abdication from his championship reign of nine years and five months, recognised the significance of 46…Rg6 and sent a congratulatory tweet reading: “Self-pinning for immortality. Congrats Ding!”
Garry Kasparov, who reigned for 15 years and is Carlsen’s rival as the greatest of all time, had a different take. Kasparov tweeted “Welcome to our very, very small club!…The chess was uneven but very hard-fought, a logical outcome in a new era of primus inter pares that may last a while.” The seven living world champions are Boris Spassky, Anatoly Karpov, Kasparov, Vladimir Kramnik, Vishy Anand, Carlsen, and now Ding.
Ding said he is ready to take on the challenges of remaining world champion. “I have to build a strong team, with great teachers and powerful computers,” he said. In Astana, he relied on the input of the world No 11, Richard Rapport, who “brought all the creativity I was lacking in my openings”. Their low-key approach to prep contrasted with Nepomniachtchi, whose team has been revealed as including Kramnik and three Russian grandmasters, and also had access to the Zhores super-computer in Moscow’s Skolkovo Institute of Technology.
Ding’s potentially most significant statement was that he was “ready for all challenges, including playing against Carlsen if he wants to recover the title, or to defend it against the young stars”. Could that remark open the door to a Carlsen v Ding match in 2024, played outside the normal qualifying route to the Candidates, and incorporating some rule changes to accommodate the all-time No 1? Sponsors would line up to back such a mouthwatering event.
In his latest interview, on a Norwegian podcast, Carlsen made a concrete suggestion about the match format: “The most obvious is one Fide also suggested, to have two games per day with a shorter time control…which means the importance of preparation is reduced and you’ll get more decisive games.” He suggested a time control of 60 minutes per player per game, or 45 minutes with 15 seconds increment added per move.
After the only previous occasion when a Fide world champion abdicated the crown, Bobby Fischer and his successor, Karpov, had three face-to-face meetings to try to arrange a match. In the first, at Tokyo 1976, it was alleged that Fischer’s initial greeting to Karpov was “Why don’t you leave the Soviet Union?” Despite this, the meeting was friendly and constructive. Their second meeting, at Córdoba, Spain, was inconclusive but at the third, at Washington in 1977, they got as far as a draft agreement before Fischer refused to sign it.
Carlsen singled out Nodirbek Abdusattorov, the 18-year-old who led Usbekistan to Olympiad 2022 gold and won the world rapid title in 2021, as one of the two teenage stars who has impressed him the most. “He is definitely the one with the most sporting qualities,” Carlsen said. “His concentration and discipline are extremely impressive. He tends to end up in difficult positions, but he will defend them very well. He’s apparently a machine on the treadmill and with weights. He’s a true sports athlete with huge potential.”
Carlsen’s other choice, the current world No 4, is unsurprising. “Alireza Firousja likes to do other things as well, but he’s the biggest talent among them all.”
The four games on the final day at Astana, shown live on the internet, attracted a huge global audience, with a peak figure of over 570,000 viewers, the second highest for a chess event after the 2021 title match, where the peak was 613,000.
How great the impact of the result was and will be in China, where Chinese chess (Xiangqi) remains more popular than the international version, is unclear. No Chinese journalists came to Astana, but on the evening after the match a Ding hashtag quickly clocked up over 10 million viewers on Weibo. A key indicator may be whether Chinese players and teams, who did not participate at the 2022 Olympiad at Chennai even though they were the reigning open and women’s champions, can resume active competition at all levels.
At the closing ceremony in Astana, where Ding received the traditional laurel wreath and gold medal, Nepomniachtchi cut a forlorn and dejected figure. The defeated Russian, who spoiled so many good positions in the match, took off his loser’s medal and did not join in the applause. There are suggestions that he could come back a third time after losing title matches to Carlsen and Ding, but the omens are not good.
Of the four previous players who were twice defeated for the world crown without ever winning it – Mikhail Chigorin, Efim Bogoljubow, Viktor Korchnoi, and Veselin Topalov, none succeeded in coming back for a third attempt. Carlsen’s abdication, and a general perception that Ding is vulnerable to his next challenger, means that Fabiano Caruana, Anish Giri, Hikaru Nakamura and all the teenage talents will make the 2024 eight-player Candidates a top priority.
Nepomniachtchi poured out his troubles to Sean Ingle in the Guardian’s inside story of the match, with more interesting details on Sean’s Twitter page, including the challenger’s stream of consciousness account of the final day.
Ding and Nepomniachtchi will meet at the chessboard again as early as next Monday. They are the top seeds in the Superbet Classic in Bucharest, Romania, which has its opening round on Saturday and is the first leg of the St Louis-organised Grand Chess Tour. The elite Bucharest event includes six of the world top 10. Saturday’s first round pairings are Ding v Maxime Vachier-Lagrave (France), Fabiano Caruana (US) v Bogdan-Daniel Deac (Romania), Nepomniachtchi v Richard Rapport (Romania), Jan-Krysztof Duda (Poland) v Anish Giri (Netherlands), Alireza Firouzja (France) v Wesley So (US). Nepomniachtchi will play White against Ding in Monday’s third round. Play starts at 1pm BST daily, and all games will be shown live and free on major chess websites.
3866: 1 Rxd4! Rxd4 2 Rxd4 Rxd4 3 Nd5! and the h6 pawn queens.
