Ding Liren of China Wins World Chess Championship

Chess is taken into account the final word recreation of chilly, logical calculation, however it’s also a recreation of ardour and, on the highest stage, of nerves. That was clear on Sunday when the world championship match in Astana, Kazakhstan, ended with Ding Liren, the brand new champion, sitting at a board by himself in a darkened theater, his head in his hand, crying tears of pleasure.

Ding’s victory got here in a tense and gripping rapid-play finale in opposition to Ian Nepomniachtchi of Russia, and solely after three weeks of slower-paced video games that had failed to supply a winner. The end result made Ding the primary man from China, a rising energy in chess, to carry the world championship, concurrently stopping Russia, which has dominated the sport for a century, from reclaiming it.

Ding’s match in opposition to Nepomniachtchi was determined in a sequence of 4 tiebreaker video games made vital after the regulation portion of the match, 14 grueling classical video games, resulted in a tie. Each participant received three video games within the regulation portion; the opposite eight resulted in attracts.

The tiebreakers, all performed Sunday, had been quicker video games wherein every participant had 25 minutes at first, with 10 seconds added each transfer. The first three video games had been attracts, however every one was extremely tense and hard-fought.

In Game 4, Nepomniachtchi, enjoying white, repeated the opening he had tried within the second recreation of the tiebreakers. On transfer 13, he tried a brand new thought, however Ding — capitalizing on its defects — quickly seized the higher hand.

Still, the sport appeared headed for a draw when Nepomniachtchi, with extra time left on his clock, determined to make the sport extra sophisticated to see if he might pressure Ding right into a mistake. Instead, it was Nepomniachtchi who cracked, making essential errors that allowed Ding to take management. Nepomniachtchi resigned on Move 68.

It was the primary and solely time that Ding led within the championship match. He earned $1.1 million for his victory, whereas Nepomniachtchi received $900,000 because the runner-up.

Ding’s victory despatched waves by means of Chinese social media late within the night, with a hashtag associated to the brand new champion rapidly amassing over 10 million views on Weibo, a Twitter-like platform. Chinese customers, stuffed with delight and aid after three anxiety-filled weeks, celebrated the championship at the same time as some admitted to their ignorance of methods to play chess. Nearly all agreed, although, on the load of the second.

“We Chinese have stepped atop chess’ highest stage,” one commenter wrote. “Ding Liren is the pride of China.”

The match had been overshadowed from the beginning by the absence of Magnus Carlsen, the Norwegian grandmaster who had held the world title since 2013. Carlsen voluntarily selected to relinquish the crown final July as a result of he had grown weary and bored of making ready for the matches, a course of that takes months.

Carlsen has lengthy been essential of the size of time of the video games for what is named the classical world championship. Each one can take hours and, significantly lately, when gamers have been in a position to put together beforehand with computer systems, they typically finish with no decisive end result. (For instance, Game 14 on Saturday, the day earlier than the tiebreakers, had lasted practically seven hours and resulted in a draw.)

For followers, and potential sponsors, that may make the most important occasion in chess much less thrilling. The match in Astana didn’t have that drawback — practically half of the video games resulted in victories — however that didn’t change Carlsen’s opinion.

In a podcast on April 28 on NRK, the biggest media firm in Norway, Carlsen stated: “There is a lot of talk now this world championship proves that ‘classical chess is doing well’ and all that. I have to admit that I don’t buy that at all.”

He defined that Nepomniachtchi and Ding took many probabilities at first phases of the video games of their championship match, however that was atypical. In his matches, Carlsen stated, that didn’t occur as a result of his opponents had been afraid of him and tried to restrict danger. The end result, he argued, was that the video games weren’t attention-grabbing.

Hikaru Nakamura, a five-time United States champion, urged on a latest livestream that it didn’t matter who received the Ding-Nepomniachtchi showdown. “The world champion is not going to be treated as a world champion,” he stated. “I don’t care if Nepomniachtchi wins. I don’t care if Ding wins. Both of them will be very deserving of winning the match. But that will not make them the world champion in anybody’s book.”

Ding’s triumph was vital for each China and Russia. Russians have dominated chess for a lot of the final century, partly a legacy of the Soviet Union, which promoted supremacy within the recreation as proof of its superiority over the West.

China, relatively than embracing the sport for related causes, rejected it as a result of it was widespread in what it seen because the “decadent” West. For eight years through the Cultural Revolution of the Sixties, enjoying the sport was banned.

The notion of chess in China started to vary after Xie Jun received the ladies’s world championship in 1991, turning into the primary non-Russian, non-Georgian girl to carry the title. That sparked a frenzy of state-sponsored actions designed to domesticate elite gamers, a mission collectively recognized by a grandiose title, “Big Dragon Plan.” Chinese colleges created chess golf equipment, and coaching establishments and tournaments proliferated. Last yr, the Chinese authorities unveiled a brand new 10-year plan to develop the nation’s subsequent era of prodigies.

China’s dedication has already yielded outcomes. A succession of ladies after Xie received the ladies’s world championship, permitting China to carry the title for a lot of the final 32 years. The present titleholder is Ju Wenjun, who grew to become champion in 2018. She will face a compatriot, Lei Tingjie, in a match in July, guaranteeing that the ladies’s title will keep in Chinese arms.

China has additionally produced some superb males’s gamers lately, with half a dozen rising into the highest 20 on the earth rankings at one time or one other. But Ding has been far and away the most effective of them.

Born in Wenzhou a yr after Xie’s victory, he was taught to play chess by his father, a chess aficionado, when he was 4. He started to compete in tournaments quickly after and received his first nationwide title when he was 5. He rose to worldwide prominence in 2009, at 16, when he grew to become China’s home champion. He received the title once more in 2011 and 2012.

He has been ranked as excessive as No. 2 on the earth, and is the one Chinese participant to ever obtain a score, the factors system used to categorise gamers, of greater than 2,800.

Ding’s path to the title was affected by obstacles. The pandemic and China’s isolation had pressured him to cease competing, however to be able to play within the candidates’ event final yr — a requirement to pick a challenger for the championship match — he needed to have performed a minimal variety of competitions. The Chinese Chess Federation stepped in to prepare three tournaments early final yr to permit him to fulfill the requirement.

At the candidates’ event, which was held final June and July in Madrid, Ding completed second behind Nepomniachtchi. Normally, that may have solely certified Nepomniachtchi to play for the title in opposition to Carlsen. But after Carlsen declined to play, Ding grew to become the opposite challenger.

The loss was a crushing one for Nepomniachtchi. Born the identical yr as Carlsen, and sometimes referred to as Russia’s reply to the Norwegian grandmaster, he had been overshadowed by his rival for years. Nepomniachtchi performed Carlsen for the world title in 2021 in Dubai, however after getting off to a great begin by drawing the primary 5 video games, he collapsed and misplaced in one of the vital lopsided leads to the historical past of the occasion. This yr’s match, with Carlsen having stepped apart, was a golden alternative for him.

In the news convention afterward, with members of Ding’s household and Xie, the primary Chinese girl’s champion, trying on, Ding was requested if the match was one of many crowning moments of his life. He struggled to clarify his emotions. “The match,” he lastly answered, “reflected the deepest of my soul.”

Chang Che contributed reporting from Seoul.