The energy of resistance: Ding needed to come from behind thrice within the classical matches in opposition to Ian Nepomniachtchi earlier than profitable the crown within the speedy tie-break. Photo credit score: FIDE
Rising dragon: Ding has performed a key position in making China a powerhouse in worldwide chess. Photo credit score: FIDE
On a chilly December afternoon on the Hyatt Regency lodge in New Delhi in 2000, Xie Jun was speaking in regards to the males’s World Chess Championship. She had simply gained the ladies’s.
“It would be great for Asian chess if [Viswanathan] Anand won the men’s title,” she advised this correspondent. Less than a fortnight later, she acquired her want: Anand, after getting via the primary a part of the knockout event in Delhi, gained the ultimate match in Tehran, crushing Alexei Shirov of Spain.
That was an epochal second for chess. It was the primary time an Asian gained the lads’s World title. Xie had change into the primary Asian feminine World champion in 1991, ending the 64-year domination of Europe and the Soviet Union.
Interestingly, in these columns 4 weeks in the past, whereas analysing the World Championship match between Ian Nepomniachtchi and Ding Liren, Anand had written that the crowning of the primary Chinese male World champion, ought to it occur, might have a dramatic impact on the sport.
And it was in dramatic style that Ding triumphed within the Kazakhstan capital, Astana. The rating was 7-7 on the finish of the 14 video games of classical chess (the standard format that provides a participant loads of time earlier than making a transfer). That led to the tie-breakers.
First, there have been to be 4 video games of speedy chess (of significantly shorter length than the classical selection). If the scores have been nonetheless stage, blitz chess — video games of even shorter time management — could be performed. It seemed just like the blitz video games could be vital: the primary three speedy video games have been drawn, and it appeared the fourth could be, too.
Risk and reward
Ding might have simply settled for it. But, as a substitute of opting for a line that will result in a draw by repetition of strikes, he performed a daring transfer together with his rook, in response to a examine by Nepomniachtchi with the queen — a transfer Ding’s predecessor Magnus Carlsen described as “self-pinning for immortality.”
Ding was taking a danger. He clearly wished to attempt for a win and thus clinch the title with out coming into the blitz video games. That transfer, in itself, wasn’t a profitable one, by any stretch of the creativeness, nevertheless it paved the way in which for, to borrow from Carlsen, Ding’s immortality. Then Nepomniachtchi missed some strikes that might have restored equality on the board.
But, then, Ding was destined to change into the World champion. A collection of incidents indicated as a lot.
First, he acquired an opportunity to play the Candidates event — the qualifier for the World title match — as a result of Sergey Karjakin was banned by FIDE, the world chess governing physique, for six months for supporting Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Karjakin, who unsuccessfully challenged Carlsen for the 2016 World championship, used to play for Ukraine till 2009.
But, with a purpose to make it to the Candidates event, Ding needed to play 28 rated classical video games in somewhat over a month. Before that, due to China’s Covid-induced journey restrictions, he was compelled to overlook the World Cup and the three-tournament FIDE Grand Prix collection — occasions from which he might have certified for the Candidates.
He completed second within the Candidates in Madrid solely due to his win within the remaining spherical in opposition to Hikaru Nakamura. The event was gained by Nepomniachtchi, who thus earned the correct to problem Carlsen for the World title for the second time in a row.
Then, Carlsen, the World champion since 2013, pulled out from the match, citing a scarcity of motivation. FIDE determined to go forward with the World Championship and introduced that the gamers that had completed first and second on the Candidates could be the contestants. So, from out of nowhere, Ding discovered himself in with an opportunity to change into the seventeenth World chess champion.
Most consultants, together with Anand, had favoured Nepomniachtchi, not least due to the match expertise he had gained in opposition to Carlsen. And it was the Russian who took the lead repeatedly.
Fighting from beneath
In the classical matches, Ding needed to come from behind thrice. He confirmed super preventing spirit. He refused to surrender, and pissed off Nepomniachtchi, by no means permitting him to consolidate his lead.
It could not have been the best of World title matches by way of high quality — there have been too many errors from each gamers — nevertheless it was undoubtedly some of the thrilling. Six of the 14 classical video games produced decisive outcomes. In 2018, all 12 video games between Carlsen and Fabiano Caruana have been drawn. Two years earlier, all however two of the 14 have been attracts.
With the huge spike in curiosity in chess, the 2023 contest would in all probability have been essentially the most adopted World title match in historical past. The followers would have beloved it too, with all its twists and the fascinating climax.
Yes, Carlsen did solid an imposing shadow. “But that wasn’t Ding’s fault,” Grandmaster R.B. Ramesh, certainly one of India’s most profitable coaches, tells The Hindu. “We have to accept Ding as the World champion and Carlsen as the world’s best player. I don’t think Carlsen would be coming back to the World Championship cycle in the current format.”
The second, at any fee, belongs to Ding. There is, to his ascent to the throne of world chess, a sure romance. Not simply due to all these circumstances, but additionally due to him being the primary ever male World champion from China — the world’s most populous nation till it was overtaken by India a fortnight in the past — the place chess was banned throughout China’s Cultural Revolution (1966 to 1976).
Ding’s technology — the golden one in Chinese chess — got here after the Big Dragon Project that was launched to lift the extent of the sport within the nation to world requirements. He performed a key position in making China a powerhouse in worldwide chess.
Ding’s peak score (2816) is the tenth (joint) highest of all time. He is simply 30. He might get even higher.
After his biggest second, he revealed how he got here again into the match. “I remembered how [writer and philosopher] Albert Camus talks about the concept of resistance,” he stated in an interview with El Pais. “The idea is that if you see that you cannot win, do everything in your power to resist. And that memory gave me the determination I needed.”
That willpower would give Ding stunning recollections for a lifetime.
