Grandmasters have reached the tie-break – Kommersant
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The Russian grandmaster Ian Nepomniachtchi was very close to winning the main chess title on Saturday in the final, 14th game with classical time control of the championship match taking place in Astana, but did not finish the Chinese Ding Liren with Black. Now the outcome of the duel, the main part of which ended in a draw with a score of 7:7, will be decided in Sunday’s tie-break – in games of rapid chess, and maybe blitz.
The final classic game of the Astana match, which, considering its price and degree of risk, could well have turned out to be calm, did not fall out of the general trend towards madness. It is clear that Ding Liren, having a white color, was in a position where, apparently, it is still worth looking for a victory. But not with the same abrupt moves as transferring the knight to g5, in an attack on the black king, already on the 12th move! Black’s position looked solid. When he saw the translation, the famous American grandmaster Fabiano Caruana, who commented on the game, did not hold back his emotions: “Yes, he wants to become world champion by checkmating!”
But Ding Liren, of course, did not smell of any obscene language: Yang Nepomniachtchi met his demarche too cold-bloodedly and did not accept the sacrifice that aggravated the situation.
Soon a reinforced concrete, it seemed, equality was established on the board, and the 34th move of the Chinese with the king on e2 generally led to a catastrophic mistake – it was necessary to put it on the adjacent cell, on d2. Apparently, believing that the exchanges were inevitable, Ding Liren missed a cool answer from Ian Nepomniachtchi – throwing the rook to c3. The advantage passed to the Russian, and the Chinese had to defend themselves, and even in the face of time pressure.
For him, it was a real walk on a thin rope stretched over an abyss. One wrong move and it’s all gone. But somehow Ding Liren always managed to find the right solutions. In the end, the game steered to the first “training” rook endgame in the match with an extra pawn for Nepomniachtchi. And rooks, even if you have superior material, it is extremely difficult to win. In general, Ding Liren somehow fought back.
Now the fate of the match will be decided by the Sunday tie-break. Within its framework, opponents first play four games of rapid chess (control – 25 minutes with an addition of ten seconds per move), and in case of a draw – a mini-match in blitz (control – five minutes with an addition of three seconds per move). If equality continues after two such matches, mini-duels will be played with even tighter control – three minutes per game with an addition of two seconds per move.
Tie-break favorite is difficult to determine.
Formally, the rating in rapid is higher for Ding Liren (he is second in the classification of the International Chess Federation, while his opponent is seventh), in blitz – for Ian Nepomniachtchi. But in fact, even in rapid chess, a Russian can be very good. For example, at the end of 2021, immediately after his previous championship match, in which he lost to the Norwegian Magnus Carlsen, who voluntarily parted with the title last summer, Nepomniachtchi almost won the title of world champion in this genre. He gave the gold of the world championship to the Uzbek wunderkind Nodirbek Abdusattorov only in a tie-break.
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