Commenters said that this was Nepo's strength, even if he doesn't make the absolute greatest move he makes a good enough move relatively quickly compared to his competition and we saw the advantage of that play out.
But ironically that game being successful for Nepo's fast style might've cost him the championship in the end as he tried to replicate the time pressure on Ding every game after to pretty poor results. He might've done better if he didn't get such a dramatic victory that game.
The same went for Nepo's supposed "tilt" in the last WCC match against Carlsen, that was media exaggeration. He lost one game with one mistake, so then had to push into risky positions after that in hopes of catching up, since he had nothing more to lose in match terms. The big discrepancy in score for that match wasn't domination, it was an artifact of the meta-factor of playing for high variance.
Well, then Ding is lying to himself (which would actually be a clever strategy so that doesn’t weigh on your mind the next time you’re in a tough time situation). Ding started his move with over 5 minutes to go. He finally played a move with about 45 secs remaining. He still had 8 moves to make in 45 seconds before time would be extended.
The 5 or so seconds he was leaving himself for each move was close to being physically impossible to achieve. Ding absolutely froze.
Also, it wasn’t “Fake news media” claiming he froze. It was live commentators who are largely GMs themselves who recognized it as him freezing. Anish Giri predicted he froze live when there was about 4 mins to go, from the fact that he hadn’t made a move yet.
Ian definitely slowed down in the latter half of the match as well, but he still played too quickly in key positions.
Ding when he froze was for whatever reason missing the good move, so felt he was lost, searching and searching for some solution. It seems crazy only because the engine is there telling us it is drawn. But the human is culling the lines that work for some misguided reason.
It is hard to over-emphasize how much high level chess is about time management.
I played in the US Chess Open in 1978, but I am not much of a player. I did write the shitty little Chess program that Apple distributed on the Apple II demo cassette tape.
Off topic, but I 100% support Magnus’s decision to do what he enjoys: playing in tournaments and not time spent preparing for world championship matches. Good for him understanding what is most important to him, and acting on it.
Sometimes...you meet the most interesting people on here!
For NY, had to live in Manhattan for two weeks, play 6 days, one day off, then 6 more days, several hours each day. I wouldn't have been able to remotely afford it, but my cousin was out of town for two weeks, and let me stay at her place. Taking two weeks off for an open Chess tournament seems insane to today's player's brought up on blitz, rapid, bullet and hyper-bullet (which I confess I enjoy a lot myself).
The first question right after a new World Champion has been crowned was about the weather.
"He said he didn’t need a translator since, “I feel very comfortable now,” " from https://chess24.com/en/read/news/ding-liren-passes-acid-test...
Anyways, I don't know who would win in a Carlsen - Ding WCC. Nobody does. If the game statistics are to be believed, then Ding would.
I think Ian got a bit too results oriented and pragmatic towards the end of the match, playing too imprecisely and quickly in key positions and always a little too happy with a draw. Ding was just playing chess.
And as often happens in chess, this ended up being the decisive psychological factor. Ian, going for a repetition, And Ding says no, let's play. This seemed to shock Ian so much that he was unable to find the correct moves. Ding was ruthless and punished his mistakes, showcasing his superior calculation(at least in that moment) and concentration.
And, honestly, in rapid, they were really really even. Even one better move at the end might have tied it up.
I think the match showed that they were about equal, not that really anyone was better.
That's why I think the final game became sort of a microcosm of the match as a whole. Ian's concentration slipped and he was thinking of making a draw, and the match situation, and not the position at hand, and when Ding rejected the draw he was too flabbergasted by it to handle the position whereas Ding just kept calculating.
It was a very tight match, and both players would have deserved it had they won they tie break. But I think overall in decisive moments Ding was just a little bit more collected and concentrated, and that's why he ended up winning.
I think as well that Black had more viable moves as the position continued to develop; Ian on the other hand had to be very accurate.
Brilliant from ding really. There’s a reason he’s about 100 Elo points stronger than Ian in Rapid.
Ding had a really bad start though, he really wasn't himself, especially in the first two games. Not sitting at the board much which is very unlike him.
I think if Nepo had played something more challenging in game 1 than the exhange variation he would've probably won the game and possibly been able to kill Ding off while he was still settling into the match.
https://youtu.be/cSxNZix1Xwc?t=12404 (3:26:44 – 4:38:10)
https://lichess.org/broadcast/fide-world-chess-championship-... (just the moves)
It's funny because at my level I thought it made 100% sense to decline draw and go Rg6. With two beautiful passed pawns and a bishop in the middle ding had a clear plan and very low risk (to me) to lose while Nepo had to do so many super accurate queen moves to defend... which seemed impossible (to me) in time pressure. It's basically (to me, again) the same problem than the super long game 6 in 2022 against carlsen.
But he realized that he has some chance for pressure, and that Ian has spent his extra time on the clock. So he puts his gloves on for the last fight. Whether or not it is the right strategy, both in this particular game and regarding the situation of the match, it shows incredible courage and fighting spirit.
Also earlier in the same game he canceled an attack realizing that he would be overextending and Ian has everything to defend. That is really really hard to do when you are attacking and had an advantage a couple moves ago, to just hold back like that.
The point is that he had 0 reason in fact to accept the draw. First, if Ian initiates a draw, its because he thinks its good for him so why help Ian ? Secondly it was either fighting now, or later in blitz. So just why delay the fight ? Literally why ? Theres no reason to. At the end of the day you win when the other makes mistake, and his position plus time control was really likely to make ian make errors also.
If anything i thought it was very a bit careles from ian to assume he would accept, and for what is worth Hikarus more or less said something in his recap along these lines and that he could have simplified a lot more before to make a draw more likely. I hope my point is clear despite my english
Carlsen did us all a favour by stepping back. I don't think the rest of the pack are too far behind these two, we should be seeing a really dynamic, entertaining fight for the top spot over the coming years.
A new challenger will appear over time, Carlsen will come out of retirement. We're just part way through a nice big story arc. I'm happy to enjoy entertaining chess.
[1] A friend and I were going over some classics whilst watching the game yesterday. Carlsen was just leagues ahead, such a gorgeous and brutal game. It's like he's wielding nunchaku at the end. https://lichess.org/broadcast/world-chess-championship-2021/...
It's happened before when Fischer refused to defend the title. And yet Karpov got the title without having beaten Fischer, who he probably wouldn't have beaten in a match even if Fischer was nutty bananas at the time. But at least he had played a match to win the candidates tournament at the time.
This time around, Ian hadn't won a match, and so the match made sense to me, because the world championship is decided by match, not tournament.
I think he simply wanted to go out undefeated. The only opponent Magnus was willing to defend his title against is Alireza, the 4th in the world behind Magnus, Ian, and Ding. But he is by far the least experienced. He has 0 classical match experience against top players, is 20 years old, and also has tilt issues. Throw in the pressure of a World Championship match and he would almost certainly have been the easiest opponent for Magnus.
This event showed who the strongest match player in the world is, and as of today - that is Ding Liren.
I know it’s not 1:1, but how many times did Kasparov face Karpov in a world championship match? I think it was 4 in total…
Edit: https://nitter.net/MagnusCarlsen/status/1652663581542891531#...
Sachdev: "Rg6 is not a move that you'd consider here, right? It's the only move that I feel with black keeps the game going, but it looks more like a losing move than a winning attempt."
Caruana: "If Rg6 is not better for white [Nepomniachtchi], I'd be shocked"
Ding: [plays Rg6]
For some context here, Fabiano played a world championship match against Magnus Carlsen. Every single classical game was drawn, and he then lost 0-3 in the tiebreaks. Fabiano plays relatively weaker in faster time controls, whereas Magnus is also the strongest rapid player in the world by a fairly wide margin.
The only way is to increase your skill level. I played for years before I could appreciate a live game played at the IM or GM level.
At tournaments there’s typically a watch room with a board and a proctor that tries different lines and variations on the position. If you didn’t understand something then playing out the line would help understand the motivation.
Not sure if there’s a good proxy for that now, since honestly I haven’t played much since the advent of chess AI started offering far better analysis than a kibbitz room. But maybe there’s some software that can help with the explanation now.
But practicing is the only way to understand it. So if youre interested, keep at it!
Particularly the candidates games (qualifier of this wcc match) are 10-20min long. He also uploads entire courses on his channel that he gives on stream or that he gave live in his current or previous club.
I hope they find better journalists to ask questions next around, they rightly got a lot of flack in this one.
Alternatively someone could put some device inside their body. Are the participants scanned somehow?
The playing hall is, I think, essentially closed after the start of the match.
Edit: context
This keeps happening: 2012, 2016, 2018, 2023.
For over a decade most of the classical world chess champions were decided by their ability to play rapid.
It's time to reform FIDE. The world chess championship is languishing, barely getting any news attention or coverage. Just kill this failed format and play rapid. The games are much more engaging for viewers. We could maybe actually get people to watch chess!
