Chess player Ding Liren will play at the tournament in Wijk aan Zee

The main event of the first major chess competition of the year – the traditional super tournament in Wijk aan Zee – will be the participation of the new world champion Ding Liren. The fact is that this performance will be the first for the Chinese grandmaster at the top level after his strange disappearance from chess immediately after his triumph in the championship match against Ian Nepomniachtchi in the spring. Ding Liren’s results in the just-completed “warm-up” competition in his homeland hint that during the more than six months that the break he took lasted, he lost his tone.

On Saturday, a traditional super tournament opens in Wijk aan Zee, Holland, which, given its background, reputation and level, is often called the chess Wimbledon. The current release of the Tata Steel Chess Tournament is unlikely to be fundamentally inferior to the previous ones in terms of selection of participants. This time, however, the list of 14 grandmasters competing for prizes does not include the world ranking leader, Norwegian Magnus Carlsen. But there are still plenty of big names. These are the Russian Ian Nepomniachtchi, who played in the last two championship matches, and the famous Dutchman Anish Giri, last year’s winner of the tournament, and the young frontmen of the new chess wave who have already broken into the elite – the Indians Gukesh Dommaraju and Rameshbabu Pragnanandha, the Uzbek Nodirbek Abdusattorov, the Frenchman Alireza Firouzja. However, the main highlight of the next Tata Steel Chess Tournament, of course, is the inclusion of Ding Liren in the entry.

In this case, context is important. In April, Ding Liren became world champion, winning a match against Nepomniachtchi in Astana for the title, which became vacant after Carlsen abandoned it. But after the triumph, something strange happened to the Chinese. Immediately after the Astana fight, he played unsuccessfully at a major tournament in Bucharest and then literally disappeared from the public space.

The principles of the International Chess Federation (FIDE) require the active participation of the title holder in various events, including, naturally, prestigious competitions, but for eight months Ding Liren did not appear at any of them.

At the same time, for example, Ian Nepomniachtchi performed constantly, albeit showing, as a rule, rather modest results.

The Chinese revealed the reasons for his long absence, which, however, did not greatly affect his rating (he is fourth in the FIDE classification), only before the Wijk aan Zee tournament in an interview with Chess.com. True, it cannot be said that it completely clarified the situation. The world champion only noted that his problems were “not physical, but psychological” in nature, that he “felt pressure from all sides” and that he now feels better than two or three months ago and is ready to defend his title. However, it can be assumed that the champion is still very far from ideal tone.

Ding Liren’s return to chess took place a week ago. He “warmed up” before the start in Wijk aan Zee at a tournament in China that brought together the strongest local chess players. And the warm-up turned out bad. In the semi-finals, Ding Liren lost to veteran Wang Hao, and in the match for third place – Wei Yi, 16th in the FIDE rankings. By the way, the champion will have to meet him in Holland. Of the six games played in this competition, the champion won only one, and in some he made mistakes typical of chess players who do not even dream of becoming a grandmaster.

Alexey Dospehov