Preview on the Candidates: Daniel King on Ding Liren

by Arne Kaehler
3/13/2020 – Daniel King takes a close look at all players of the "candidates tournament 2020" in his preview on YouTube. Only two players are left to analyze, after he has reviewed the six other grandmasters already. All of these players have the same goal, which is to fight for a chance to challenge Magnus Carlsen at end of the year. In King's latest instalment, it is time to reaffirm the qualities of Ding Liren. | Photo: Niki Riga / World Chess

Power Play 20: Test Your Attacking Chess Power Play 20: Test Your Attacking Chess

Grandmaster Daniel King presents ten exemplary attacking performances. At key moments he stops and asks you to play a move. King then gives feedback on the most plausible continuations. It’s the next best thing to having your own personal trainer!

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The most stable player? 

In his preview of the double round-robin candidates tournament 2020, Daniel King has already reviewed Wang Hao, Anish Giri, Kirill Alekseenko, Ian Nepomniatchi, Alexander Grischuk and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave on his YouTube channel (all links to the previews are further below). The only two missing players are Ding Liren and Fabiano Caruana. King is concentrating on Ding Liren now, who has had an Elo rating of over 2800 for over 18 months meanwhile.

From August 2017 to December 2018 the current number three in the world did not suffer a single loss and had a streak of 100 classical games without a defeat. During this time, Ding took part in his first candidates tournament where he drew all of his games except one, which he won. He keeps on getting better and may well be the hardest player to beat in Yekaterinburg.

Daniel King analyses one of Ding's games in which he beats none other than the world champion himself, Magnus Carlsen. Although this game is "only" a blitz game, we can see the strategic strength of the Chinese grandmaster.

Ding Liren

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Arne Kaehler, a creative thinker who is passionate about board games in general was born in Hamburg and learned how to play chess at a very young age. Through teaching chess to youth teams and creating chess content on YouTube, Arne was able to extend this passion onto others and has even made an online chess course for anyone who wants to learn how to play this game. Currently, Arne blogs for the English news page of ChessBase and focuses on creating promotional and entertaining articles.