Ding for the Win

This morning (Sunday) I woke up at 3:45am so that I could watch the final day of the 2023 Chess World Championship between Ian Nepomniachtchi (Russia) and Ding Liren (China) which was taking place in Kazakhstan. Today's matches were the tie-breakers after the previous 14 rounds had ended tied 7 to 7. Today was 4 rounds of Rapid Chess (25 min time limit for each player + 10 seconds per move). If the match had still been tied after the 4 matches then they would have gone to Blitz matches (5 min time limit for each player + 3 seconds per move). The Chess World Championship had gone to the Rapid tie breaker matches in the past but had never been decided by Blitz matches. Today sure seemed to be headed toward the Blitz matches but in the 4th Rapid match there was a shocking win when Ding Liren won the match playing with the black pieces after never leading at any other time throughout the entire championships. The surprising thing wasn't just that Ding won but it was how he won.

The first 3 rounds of the Rapid Chess had ended in draws and it looked very likely that this last match was going to end the same way when Ding made a surprise move with 1 min left on his clock where he decided to take a chance and not agree to the draw but instead went for the win (high risk/high reward). The move he made was very risky (pinning one of his rooks to his king) and it seemed to really surprise Ian who had about 3 min left on his clock at that time. Ding pressed hard after that point and put pressure on Ian with a couple of pawns advancing to give him an additional queen. Finally Ian conceeded the match and everyone appeared to be in shock including both players and the commentators. It was probably one of my favorite chess matches that I have watched of all time. Not only because of the stakes of the game but also how Ding took a chance with all of those stakes on the line rather than play safe and try to win in a future game. Because both players were almost out of time at the end, it was being played pretty quickly and was similar to the pace of a Blitz game at that time.

The following story provides a much better description than I can about the match. I am very happy that I woke up early to watch all 4 of today's matches including the final one which crowned the new Chess World Champion. Congrats to Ding!! Great match and great character demonstrated throughout the tournament!!