The Chinese chose the right system – Kommersant

Two rounds before the end of the main part of the match for the title of world chess champion, held in Astana, the score was equalized. The Chinese Ding Liren caught up with the Russian grandmaster Ian Nepomniachtchi for the third time, winning the 12th game against him with White — another game of a duel with a dashing plot, which, however, is hardly destined to later serve as an illustration of the talent of one or another future champion.

This game brought back everyone who watched it a few days ago — to that segment of the match, when two outstanding grandmasters, who seemed to have been preparing for it for a long time, instead of playing clearly, solidly and measuredly, as befits in such cases, with pleasure weighed each other weighty slaps in the face and with the same pleasure they were substituted under them. After all, after four draws in a row, one could decide that the standard of champion fights in Astana had triumphed after all. But no, nothing like that.

In the 12th game, Ding Liren played a new opening for this match – the Collet system.

This is when, after advancing the queen’s pawn by two squares on the first move, the king’s pawn is then moved only one cell forward. It looks modest and timid, but some masters – like the famous Soviet grandmaster Artur Yusupov – systematically proved what a colossal potential for White lurks in this variation, with which the younger generation of chess fans who dream of returning the title to Russia are apparently quite connected. Nice memories.

In 2016, New York hosted a match for the world title between its owner Magnus Carlsen, who renounced his status last summer due to a lack of motivation, and Sergey Karjakin, who was then at his peak. For seven games, the invulnerable Norwegian could not break through the Russian defense in any way, and in the eighth he decided to try the Kolle system, which is not so common at the elite level. This led him to trouble: he lost with White. Then, however, Carlsen restored the balance, took over in a tie-break match, but still pushing him close to the edge of the abyss was already an achievement.

Ian Nepomniachtchi, unlike Karjakin, played in such a way that it was tempting to assume that he had not studied the Collet system. The Russian played the opening in a strange way: for some reason he placed the queen and the bishop side by side on the seventh rank, despite the fact that the bishop still moved forward to tie the white knight. In general, a loss of time and pace, promising White the initiative.

And Ding Liren seemed to use it. By exchanging the bishop for a knight, he spoiled Black’s pawn structure and, more importantly, destroyed the barrier in front of their king. A fun game began – with a Chinese attack on the kingside.

But then Ding Liren started acting weird. Slowing down the offensive, for some reason he began to butt, now with a knight, now with a pawn, the black queen, although it was clear that serious problems did not threaten him. And at some point, a glance at the board was already fixing with surprise that Nepomniachtchi had an attack, that there were a lot of weaknesses in White’s redoubts.

In a normal, or something, game of the championship match, Black, of course, was obliged, well, maybe not to put the squeeze on, but at least to crush White so that they would only care about saving. But is this a normal championship match?

Then came the usual exchange of gifts. Ian Nepomniachtchi, for some absolutely mysterious reason, didn’t put his knight in the “fork” of the rooks, winning the “exchange”. Ding Liren, in response, also did not take the rook, at which the bishop was aiming at direct fire. Nepomniachtchi, for no apparent reason, threw a more or less active bishop to the rear, on b8… And it would be nice if behind these decisions there were some deep ideas that would be revealed in all their glory later, which neither the commentators hung with titles, nor the chess “engine” see , evaluating the position. It was hard to come up with ideas like that.

The idea, however, was in the 34th move of Nepomniachtchi, who threw him a pawn on f5. I wanted to create chaos on the kingside in a bad situation, to aggravate. But Ding Liren, of course, did not pay any attention to the impudent pawn, and took the other pawn with the rook – on e6, which was left without support due to the march of the neighbor.

And everything quickly cleared up. The Chinese has a deadly passed d-pawn. He has a hidden check with the queen in his arsenal, which is done with her help and terribly harms White. And the Russian has zero counterarguments. And you need to give up, allowing Ding Liren to equalize the score for the third time in a match in which now all the 14 classical games provided for by the regulations will definitely be played: an early victory can no longer happen. The first of them, with white pieces at Ian Nepomniachtchi, will take place on Thursday, the second, in which the Russian will have black pieces, on Saturday.

Alexey Dospekhov