The second became the penultimate – Kommersant

Russian grandmaster Ian Nepomniachtchi suffered a painful setback for the second time in a row after losing in a championship match to China’s Ding Liren. Nepomniachtchi took the penultimate place at the Superbet Chess Classic in Bucharest, falling out of the top three in the world rankings. True, the new world champion performed a little better, finishing only one line above the Russian.

The results of the Bucharest tournament, which opened the Grand Chess Tour, the main commercial series in chess, came out, of course, terribly curious, if not extraordinary. And this is not about the winner. It was the famous American grandmaster Fabiano Caruana, who played extremely stably, practically did not allow any failures and deservedly earned a prize check in the amount of $100,000. The most amusing picture is in the basement of the tournament table.

Ten chess players took part in the Superbet Chess Classic. Nine of them are elite players, one more is the modest grandmaster Bogdan-Daniel Diak, who is up to the moon before the elite, who found himself in this competition only because he represents the host country (Richard Rapport also played under the flag of Romania in Bucharest, but until recently time he was Hungarian). So, Dyak, of course, found himself on the last, tenth line. And right in front of him, in ninth position, the worst in the standings of the strong, is Ian Nepomniachtchi, although in fact, according to all formal signs, he should have been considered one of the favorites of the tournament: the second number in the International Chess Federation (FIDE) rating, a participant in the last two championship matches, in 2021 he lost to the Norwegian Magnus Carlsen, and in April 2023 to the Chinese Ding Liren, a top-class chess player.

But in Bucharest, Nepomniachtchi’s performance did not at all correspond to his reputation and track record. He got lost in positions that were not so difficult, he could not find something that was not absolutely obvious, but also not so cleverly hidden that only an advanced computer program could detect him, the way to victory in the game of the final round against the Dutchman Anish Giri, suffered three defeats – from Caruana, as well as the French Alireza Firouzdzhi and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, defeated only Dyak and outstripped the unknown Romanian outsider by only half a point.

However, for the new world champion Ding Liren, the tournament turned out a little better. He took eighth place in it and, like Nepomniachtchi, at times amazed with toothlessness and mistakes out of the blue.

The explanation for this breakdown of the two chess giants lies, of course, at hand. The championship match in Astana ended on April 30. Usually, after such exhausting fights, chess players take a break to recover. Ding Liren and Yang Nepomniachtchi immediately, without rest, for some reason again rushed into battle, it seems, having miscalculated with the form, with the reserve of energy. It is no coincidence that the Chinese has already refused the second – Polish – stage of the Grand Chess Tour, for which he was announced: apparently, he realized that he would not be able to pull it off.

Ding Liren, after the failure in Bucharest, can at least warm his soul by the fact that he suffered it, being the owner of the most valuable title in chess, which Carlsen relinquished last year. Nepomniachtchi does not have such “warming” factors. For him, this is the second consecutive painful failure that has practical consequences.

Before the start of the Superbet Chess Classic, Nepomniachtchi was six points short of reaching the prestigious rating mark of 2800. In fact, if he had played at least close to his usual level in Bucharest, he would have certainly conquered it. And so the Russian, according to ChessBase, lost as many as 15 points in Romania and will fall out of the top three of the world ranking, rolling back to fourth place. His second position will be taken by Ding Liren Firouzja, who has also pushed back.

Alexey Dospekhov