Winning starts with what you know
The new version 18 offers completely new possibilities for chess training and analysis: playing style analysis, search for strategic themes, access to 6 billion Lichess games, player preparation by matching Lichess games, download Chess.com games with built-in API, built-in cloud engine and much more.
In this episode, we return to the 2023 World Champion, Ding Liren. Let’s take a brief look at his biography.
Ding was born in Wenzhou, a city in southeastern China (which also happens to be the hometown of Zhu Chen, the former Women’s World Champion). From a young age, his talent stood out. For instance, he tied for first place in both the U10 and U12 Youth World Championships. In 2009, at the age of 16, he achieved a remarkable result in the highly competitive Chinese Championship. Despite being the second-lowest-rated participant on paper, Ding won the tournament undefeated, scoring 8.5 out of 11, and defeating the two highest-rated players—Ni Hua (2724) and Wang Hao (2696)—among others.
He went on to achieve great success, but one of his most notable accomplishments was at the Sinquefield Cup in the United States. There, he again finished undefeated, tying for first place with Magnus Carlsen with a score of 6.5 out of 11. Even more impressively, Ding managed to win twice in blitz against Carlsen in the tiebreak to claim the tournament. It was the first time since 2007 that the Norwegian had lost a tiebreak!
However, after capturing the World Championship title in 2023, Ding’s performance began to decline. It soon became apparent that he was struggling with mental health issues. I saw him in person during the Grenke Open in Karlsruhe, where he was one of the special guests in the invitational group (the Grenke Classic), which also included Magnus Carlsen. Unfortunately, Ding's performance in the tournament was lackluster and he tied for fourth place.
By the end of the year, Ding’s January 2023 rating of 2811 had dropped dramatically to 2728 in November 2024. Now, he considered himself the underdog in his duel against 18-year-old Indian prodigy Gukesh Dommaraju. Ding candidly admitted that he might "go down very hard." With a touch of cynicism, he remarked that before the World Championship match in Singapore he had a streak of 28 classical games without a win—21 draws and 7 losses.
Ding has pointed out that in several of those games, he created enough chances to win and even had winning positions in some of them, but he made too many mistakes. A particularly dramatic example was his game against Liem Quang Le (Vietnam) at the Olympiad. Ding had a completely winning position, but first gave away the win and then lost a theoretically drawn endgame.
In contrast, Gukesh had an outstanding performance in the Chess Olympiad 2024 in Budapest. He played on board 1 for India and scored an incredible 9 out of 10 and leading India to victory. Despite this, Ding noted that the head-to-head record between him and Gukesh in classical games before the World Championship match was 2-0 in his favor.
The diagram position is from a rapid game between Ding and Carlsen, White has a promising attacking position. How did Ding win?
Key Concepts of Chess - Pawn Structures Vol.1 and 2
In this two-part course the emphasis will be on typical pawn-structures.
This week’s show (for Premium Members only)
| Advertising |
