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!
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.
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.
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
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…
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.
[0] https://lichess.org/broadcast/fide-world-chess-championship-...
Note magnus's overly blank face, the sunglasses, the spirited (but joyless!) dancing.
The whole thing is already hard to take seriously usually with the whole wild card thing and the format being criticised by approximately everyone.
You are right that Chess is not as popular as Go in China.
Maybe we should take his words at face value and that he really is fed up with the thing.
IMO good for him. He won it all and now he is doing new things with his life.
In the end, if Ian deserved to win more than Ding, why did Ding win?
I'm a lowly 1400-1500 rated player so I'm not using engines to prepare the sorts of crazy lines you see in a WCC but they help me understand when a position has outs/things to play for and/or quickly identify when a winning line was available.
i.e I mostly use it for post-game analysis and it's been really good. I don't have the sort of money to pay for 1:1 chess mentorship so engine is the next best thing.
I derive my enjoyment in chess from improving, engines help me improve ergo engines make chess more enjoyable for me.
For example, understanding why the placement of a piece on move 12 can have serious repercussions on move 42 doesn’t really translate to other games.
People (especially young people) aren't being introduced to its excitement and beauty via Ding & Nepo playing loooooooong matches in championships like this.
They may go on to watch the world championship after Botez have converted them though.
Chess has moved on significantly since Magnus first became champion (partly due to the man himself).
If Fide is struggling to move with it, there will be a limit to what it can ask of its dominant figure in the context of an event that requires huge investment in time, money and energy for participants.
Currently the World Chess Championship is just a collection of very talented chess players spending months having supercomputers evaluate positions looking for the slightest imaginable edge.
That just... doesn't make sense.
Maintaining dominance against a peer (and their team) who spend the better part of a year doing nothing but preparing for you, is very different than maintaining it in the relatively far more casual environment of tournaments. And there's a big ego trap here. Quitting is easy, especially when you're on top. Continuing to fight until the day you fall is hard, and requires immense character.
The problem with the current WCC is that it’s very much up for debate, and this is like, your opinion.
I don’t think Ding Liren is a better player than Magnus Carlsen.
The current title is mostly symbolic. It means “the second best player in the world”.
For the world championship players spend the better part of a year, generally with a large team of other world class players, intensely preparing to play games against only a single player, studying their games, and finally unleashing absolutely everything they've discovered. And then there's a constant metagame knowing each game you play one day will be deeply studied by your opponent and his team, and he will come back fully prepared the next day.
Carlsen gave up his title because he no longer wanted to put the massive amounts of work in that are required to maintain it. Would he be the best match player if he started putting this work in again? Maybe? But he's chosen not to do that.
Reread carefully your arguing against Carlsen. If it applies to Carlsen, then why not to Ding Liren? That doesn't makes sense to me at all.
Perhaps change the format. Carlsen stepped down, because it's too much preparation year after year. And with him being the GOAT, everyone was always preparing defensively and hoping for a blunder, making it somewhat "boring" games (quotes, as in draws doesn't have to be boring).
(I can't reasonably put Morphy in this conversation, and I'm not sure anyone else has an argument.)
Yes, that’s a reasonable proposal. Title matches don’t have to happen on a fixed schedule like the Super Bowl, and in the past, they didn’t. They were ad-hoc and happened whenever a worthy contender raised enough prize money to challenge the current champion, who had a lot of leeway in negotiating the format and venue.
Carlsen could either defend his title, or give it up. He chose to give it up. He didn't choose to keep it indefinitely or demand an opponent of his liking. Even he's not that unsporting.
This isn't the early 20th century anymore when world champions dodged challengers until one they knew they could beat appeared, and hasn't been for a long time.
If you look at the Fabiano/Carlsen matches, what you see is that both players know Carlsen is the better calculator, but that Fabiano is going to have better prep almost every single time. He is one of the best theoreticians alive. So what did he play? Give absolutely nothing Carlsen could grab on to when playing black, yet the scariest possible theoretical openings as white, sometimes still being in-book for 5-10 moves over Carlsen. When Fabi was white, he had plenty of ambition and plenty of chances, but the calculation wasn't quite good enough, as Carlsen's worst moves were never significant, visible blunders.
The Fabiano of that championship would have won this year's championship with relative ease, just because he'd never lose with black, and would capitalize on blunders. The way he played really is the best chance he had.
The wonderful spectacle of a match we just got only comes from two players that, inexplicably, kept trying to win with black, and fail. Good for us, but I suspect that for a top professional it's very hard to understand.
Nepo vs Fabiano is +7 =21 -2 (including 3 wins with the black pieces)
---
I think a lot of what we're seeing is not about openings, but risk tolerance. Fabiano has incredible, and fighting, opening preparation. But what really matters is what happens after the opening. In high level chess you often find yourself in a scenario where you see two main ideas in a position. One gives you slight winning chances, but basically zero losing chances. The other gives you good winning chances, but the position will be complex and difficult to play - your opponent will also have plenty of winning chances. And Ding, in particular, seemingly had just zero fear of risk this entire match, which is largely what drove everything.
I'd also add this drives another common misconception in chess. If two very strong players both play a game while making a conscious effort to avoid complexity, you'll end up with a draw that has an extremely high level of accuracy. By contrast if they decide to enter into these sort of unclear positions, you'll see even the best in the world make mistakes, and even blunders, because chess is hard! So people outside the game see the mistakes as driving the results, and that's certainly true. But the reason those mistakes are happening is not because the players are just playing weaker, but because even the best in the world will make mistakes in complex positions.
Carlsen is just a beast.
[1] - https://web.archive.org/web/20181003104802/http://ratings.fi...
[2] - https://web.archive.org/web/20181009092541/https://ratings.f...
It's like Heisenberg Uncertainty.
I would happily have Morphy in the conversation too, because he was so far ahead it's simply mind-boggling. He made his opponents, often the strongest players of the time besides him, look like idiots.
If we're judging only by strength relative to contemporaries, I think Morphy would take it.
If we judge only by absolute strength Carlsen at his peak is probably it. For some mix of the two, all the ones mentioned are potentially valid picks, and I'd include Lasker in that group as well.
Tal probably would've been if he was a lot healthier, but he doesn't make the list in an unfair world, though I'd be amiss not to at least mention my favourite historical player :)
Btw, are you in any way responsible for analysis.sesse.net? I've been using it every day!
a.s.n is my site, yes. I haven't been following this match as closely as the previous ones, so it's been a bit delayed some days (and I haven't bothered dealing with some bugs in the source PGN, so the clocks have been off at times).