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Key events
Both players nudge their f-pawns forward (17. f3 f6). Then their h-pawns (18. h3 h6). The Dutch GM echoes Narodisky’s assessment, saying: “An ideal start of the match for Nepomniachtchi. He has a risk-free position and a long term structural edge.”
Nepomniachtchi then plays 19. Kh2. Ding spends time considering his response.
Ding answers with the solid 14. … Ne6. Nepomniachtchi takes a moment before forcing a trade of material (15. Nxe7+ Qxe7) followed by 16. Bg3 Bh5, making things slightly uncomfortable for black.
“Comparatively, white’s risk is very low,” the American grandmaster Daniel Naroditsky says on Chess.com’s broadcast. “And white has a clear path toward improving his position [with] better pawn structure. Objective metrics indicate that white is slightly better. This is exactly what the doctor ordered for Ian Nepomniachtchi in the first game of his second world championship match.”
Nepomniachtchi plays 14. Nf5 instead! And the Norwegian supercomputer Sesse now evaluates the position as dead even.
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Nepomniachtchi plays 13. Nc3 after nearly 25 minutes. Ding answers with 13. … Rad8. Surely now it’s h3 for the Russian.
Nepomniachtchi has been in the think tank for more than 15 minutes. The engines favor attacking black’s bishop with h3 to maintain white’s slight advantage, but Nc3 and Nd2 are also viable options. Twenty minutes and counting for Nepomniachtchi, but he’s still more than 10 minutes ahead of Ding on the clock.
We have our first meme of this year’s world title match. And it’s Ding Liren retreated to the rest room, presumably awake, where he’s spent an awful lot of time during today’s game.
me in bed this morning after drinking 7 tequila redbulls last night and walking 30 mins home with my bacon mctoast pic.twitter.com/wlcKo9RODO
— the chess historian♟️📖 (@emiliacastelao) April 9, 2023
Ding finally plays 11. … Bg4. He’s already fallen 23 minutes behind on time. Nepomniachtchi spends a few minutes before answering with 12. Nd4.
Says the Dutch grandmaster Erwin L’Ami: “A good, practical opening idea from Nepo aiming for a complex strategic struggle where he is more familiar. The reason the engines preferred 11…Ne6 is that Ding’s 11…Bg4 allows 12.Nd4.”
Ding plays 10. … Nc5. Will we see a queen exchange? Nepomniachtchi is away from the board, but he returns and immediately plays 11. Qe3 to move the queen out of harm’s way, clearly still in his preparation.
Ding plays 7. … Kd7 after a 10-minute think. Nepomniachtchi immediately counters with 8. d4, prompting a pawn exchange (8. … exd4 9. Qxd4). Ding castles (9. … O-O) and Nepomniachtchi continues to blitz out his moves, getting his black bishop into the action with 10. Bf4.
Ding doesn’t play the Berlin, opting for 3. … a6. A relatively quick opening sequence follows (4. Ba4 Nf6 5. O-O Be7 6. Bxc6 dxc6 7. Re1 Nd7). Ding then settles in for his first think of the match. He’s been pondering his next move for more than five minutes now.
Game 1 is under way!
Nepomniachtchi playing with the white pieces sticks with his favored 1. e4. Ding takes a couple moments before replying with 1. … e5. And the Ruy Lopez is on the board (2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bb5)!
Both players are at the board for today’s first game. Nepomniachtchi was there roughly 10 minutes before the scheduled start at the top of the hour. Ding arrived two minutes later.
Nepomniachtchi and Ding faced off one last time at Saturday’s final press conference, which you can watch below. It was a mostly conciliatory affair with neither contestant revealing much about their preparation. Pressed on what it would mean to become the first man from China to win the world chess championship, Ding was to the point.
“Sometimes I think about becoming the first Chinese world champion as well as the 17th world champion and writing my name in history,” the 30-year-old said. “If I can do that, it will be a huge glory.”
Only once during the 45-minute presser was Carlsen’s name mentioned: when Ding admitted his feeling of shock when the Norwegian would not take part.
“I was surprised,” he said. “Magnus not playing has surprised me a little bit.”
Our Leonard Barden has filed his final dispatch ahead of today’s opening game. Barden, who’s written the Guardian’s chess column every week since September 1955, gives the slight edge to Nepomniachtchi.
Ding would have been favourite on his pre-pandemic form up to 2019, as he was impeccably solid and had a run of 100 games unbeaten in 2017-18, a record up to that time but since surpassed by Carlsen’s 125. Earlier, he had taken a law degree at Peking University before breaking into the world top 10 at age 22.
However, Ding was caught up in prolonged lockdowns in his home city of Wenzhou where he lived with his parents, and that affected his results when he resumed playing. He had finished fourth without loss at the 2018 Candidates but only tied fifth in 2020-21 where he had to quarantine for two weeks before the start. He qualified again in 2022 after tournaments and matches were controversially organised for him at short notice to preserve his rating, and only reached second place in the final rounds.
Nepomniachtchi’s career also shows moments of what the commentator and former Fide champion, Alexander Khalifman, calls “mental instability in extreme situations – if something suddenly goes wrong, both can falter and crumble”.
The Russian probably has the edge in opening preparation. Before and during his Candidates victories and his match with Carlsen, he had access to the Zhores supercomputer, based in Moscow’s Skolkovo Institute of Technology, which helped him and his team evaluate opening positions and thus secure an early advantage on the board. Zhores’s main function is for scientific research into machine learning and artificial intelligence.
Nepomniachtchi is a late developer at the highest levels, attributing an improvement in mindset for changing from a gifted but inconsistent player into a true contender for the crown. He used to be the least hard-working GM in the top 20, but approaching his 30th birthday he felt he had achieved little, so adopted a more serious approach. He used to be overoptimistic, a trait he shared with Efim Bogolyubov, who twice lost world title matches to Alexander Alekhine, but claims to have also corrected that weakness.
Who will win? In their only previous 2023 appearances, Nepomniachtchi tied for first at Düsseldorf without seeming to overexert himself, while Ding struggled at Wijk aan Zee, won only one game and lost three, and finished low down the table. The overall evidence points to a Russian victory by around 7.5-5.5.
The format
Here’s a review of the format for the world championship match. It will consist of 14 classical games with each player awarded one point for a win and a half-point for a draw. Whoever reaches seven and a half points first will be declared the champion.
The time control for each game is 120 minutes for the first 40 moves, 60 minutes for the next 20 moves and then 15 minutes for the rest of the game plus an additional increment of 30 seconds per move starting on move 61.
If the match is tied after 14 games, tie-breaks will be played on the final day in the following order:
A four-game rapid playoff with a 25+10 time control. A drawing of lots will decide which player starts with white.
If still tied, the players will contest a two-game playoff with a 5+3 time control. A drawing of lots will decide which player starts with white.
If still tied, the players will contest another two-game playoff with a 5+3 time control. A drawing of lots will decide which player starts with white.
If still tied, the players will play 3+2 games until there is a winner. A drawing of lots will again decide who starts with white, with colors alternating after each game.
The complete official regulations can be found here.
Preamble
Hello and welcome to day one of the World Chess Championship. Over the next few weeks, second-ranked Ian Nepomniachtchi of Russia and third-ranked Ding Liren of China will compete in a scheduled best-of-14-games match at the St Regis Astana Hotel for the winner’s share of a €2m ($2.2m) prize fund and the sport’s most prestigious title.
The legitimacy of that title, of course, is an open question. While this year’s championship match features two of the world’s top three, it’s the absence of the third which has threatened to overshadow the whole affair and largely neutered the stakes of the sport’s showcase event.
Magnus Carlsen, who was regarded as the world’s greatest player even before rising to the No 1 ranking more than a decade ago, has decided against defending his world title for a fifth time, citing a lack of motivation as the primary factor in a podcast finally confirming his abdication last summer. It marks only the second time in the 137-year history of world championship matchplay that a holder has opted not to defend his crown – after American grandmaster Bobby Fischer controversially forfeited the belt in 1975.
What’s left is a delicious matchup between Nepomniachtchi and Ding, even if critics including longtime world champion Garry Kasparov have branded it as an “amputated” event without the world’s best player involved.
Nepomniachtchi, 32, bounced back admirably from his demoralizing defeat to Carlsen in the 2021 world title match by winning the eight-man candidates tournament last summer in Madrid with a record 9½/14 score. He will start with the white pieces in today’s opening game after Friday’s drawing of lots and play under a neutral Fide flag, having signed an open letter last year condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The 30-year-old Ding, who favors a more solid, methodical approach, rallied for second place in the candidates with a dramatic final-round win over the American grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura, clinching his spot in the world title match thanks to Carlsen’s withdrawal.
We’re roughly an hour away from the ceremonial first move, which will be made by Askhat Oralov, Kazakhstan’s minister of culture and sports, along with Fide president Arkady Dvorkovich. Plenty more to come between now and then.
Bryan will be here shortly. In the meantime here’s his lookahead to the world title match starting today in Kazakhstan’s capital.
