Ding's million dollar mistake

by Frederic Friedel
12/29/2024 – After our Christmas Puzzles, involving kings and a couple of pawns, you may be tempted to call Ding Liren's oversight in the final game of the World Championship match a gross blunder. It was a catastrophic mistake that cost the World Champion millions of dollars of potential future income. How it came about is explained by ChessBase Magazine author GM Dorian Rogozenco in this video reconstruction.

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Chapter 4.1 of ChessBase Magazine 223 has a video wrap-up by GM Dorian Rogozenko of the 2024 World Championship in Singapore, which you can watch here for free:

You should move the video to 25:24" to catch the key part of today's discussion.

You can order the ChessBase Magazine 223 here. It comes as a CB Book, Download, or Postal Delivery (booklet + key). The magazine contains over six hours of video playing time, with recordings by Rustam Kasimdzhanov, Daniel King, Jan Markos, Karsten Müller, Oliver Reeh, Robert Ris and Dorian Rogozenco.

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Editor-in-Chief emeritus of the ChessBase News page. Studied Philosophy and Linguistics at the University of Hamburg and Oxford, graduating with a thesis on speech act theory and moral language. He started a university career but switched to science journalism, producing documentaries for German TV. In 1986 he co-founded ChessBase.
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Mamack1 Mamack1 12/30/2024 05:35
abdekker

I am all but certain that Ding didn't throw the game/match *consciously*, as others have explained well previously whilst it was a major blunder it wasn't all that "surprising" given the position. 99% of the time, getting the rooks off in that setup would have meant an absolutely trivial draw. And he was clearly aiming for a draw almost from the off.

Subconsciously though, who knows? The human mind works in mysterious ways all right.
satman satman 12/30/2024 02:38
Somehow I doubt that Ding cares very much about the "millions of dollars of potential future income".
Denix Denix 12/30/2024 01:27
The result was meant to be - a great relief for Ding and a great step for Gukesh. Chess has become more exciting again!
abdekker abdekker 12/30/2024 01:05
Ding played great, at times sublime, chess but frequently show a lack of confidence. He repeatedly aimed for simplifications or offered tacit 3-fold repetitions, which Gukesh generally refused...often incorrectly! Ding's final-game blunder is trivial and smells to me like was looking for a plausible time to throw the match. This may have been only partially conscious. Given reports of mental health issues related to the pressure and burden of his role as World Champion, I think Ding like Carlsen before him, did not want to continue.
phille phille 12/29/2024 09:22
Well, the french Defence was already in Ding his rep. between the years 2001-2005, which is a fact, but GM Rogozenco gives a different view at the beginning of his video.
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