Winning match – Newspaper Kommersant No. 66 (7511) dated 04/17/2023

The match for the title of world chess champion, which takes place in Astana, to its middle swung at the status of almost the most unpredictable and sharp championship match in history. Of his six games, four turned out to be productive, and the Russian grandmaster Ian Nepomniachtchi, twice gaining the lead, lost it twice, yielding to the Chinese Ding Liren.

It is very easy to assess the originality of the Astana match. Championship fights have long been taught that within their framework a draw in the “classics” is an absolutely natural outcome, and when one of the opponents takes over, it is almost a small miracle. In 2016, in the confrontation between Norwegian Magnus Carlsen and Russian Sergey Karjakin, out of a dozen games with classical time control, only two were productive. In 2018, Carlsen and the American Fabiano Caruana did without them at all. In the previous match, which took place in Dubai at the end of 2021, the Norwegian, who voluntarily gave up his title last summer and made it vacant, defeated Ian Nepomniachtchi, winning four games against him and not losing a single one. But this “machine gun burst” from Carlsen only matured after a series of five draws in a row. It was followed by his out of the blue, almost out of nothing success in the marathon sixth, which forced the opponent to take risks and open up.

In this match, in order to play four effective games, Ian Nepomniachtchi and Ding Liren had to meet at the board only six times. And this is something incredible, considering how often caution and depth of preparation triumph in championship fights, in which it is terribly difficult to surprise an opponent with some sharp variation. Also, this match does not hint at who is the favorite in it, because everyone has good and bad days in turn.

Ian Nepomniachtchi for the incomplete first half of the match (his regulations provide for 14 classical games) has already managed to get the lead twice and lose it twice. Moreover, the second time the exchange of injections took place within two days.

On Saturday, Ian Nepomniachtchi, who played white, and Ding Liren had a discussion, perhaps in the most popular opening at the highest level, the Spanish game. In it, all the paths seem to be traveled up and down, but the charm of the “Spanish flu” lies precisely in the fact that even a thorough knowledge of the theory often does not play a decisive role here – you still have to understand complex positions. This time Nepomniachtchi outplayed Ding Liren in a very convincing style. Not to say that the Chinese made some terrible mistakes, but the Russian used every inaccuracy, say, the retreat of the attacked queen to the wrong square, in order to undermine Black’s defense.

In Sunday’s game, Ding Liren already had White, and he opted for the London system, which can be considered an extraordinary event. This debut is not very popular, and in the matches for the world title it was generally used for the first time. If Ding Liren, having bet on him, first of all wanted to knock Jan Nepomniachtchi a little out of the rhythm, then he seems to have achieved his goal. A couple of delays by the Russian in the opening – and the Chinese got a small but quite stable advantage.

And then there was a sharp game, a meat grinder, in which Nepomniachtchi, having allowed his opponent to aim his queen, rook and knight at his king, presumably hoped for counterplay associated, for example, with the frisky march of the a-pawn. However, it did not grow together with counterplay. That is, the pawn got close to the promotion square, but at that moment, Ding Liren, who found exceptionally correct moves, had an absolutely irresistible mating attack glued together.

Alexey Dospekhov