The stars align for resilient King Ding

The power of resistance: Ding had to come from behind three times in the classical matches against Ian Nepomniachtchi before winning the crown in the rapid tie-break. Photo credit: FIDE

Rising dragon: Ding has played a key role in making China a powerhouse in international chess. Photo credit: FIDE

On a cold December afternoon at the Hyatt Regency hotel in New Delhi in 2000, Xie Jun was talking about the men’s World Chess Championship. She had just won the women’s.

“It would be great for Asian chess if [Viswanathan] Anand won the men’s title,” she told this correspondent. Less than a fortnight later, she got her wish: Anand, after getting through the first part of the knockout tournament in Delhi, won the final match in Tehran, crushing Alexei Shirov of Spain.

That was an epochal moment for chess. It was the first time an Asian won the men’s World title. Xie had become the first Asian female World champion in 1991, ending the 64-year domination of Europe and the Soviet Union.

Interestingly, in these columns four weeks ago, while analysing the World Championship match between Ian Nepomniachtchi and Ding Liren, Anand had written that the crowning of the first Chinese male World champion, should it happen, could have a dramatic effect on the game.

And it was in dramatic fashion that Ding triumphed in the Kazakhstan capital, Astana. The score was 7-7 at the end of the 14 games of classical chess (the traditional format that offers a player plenty of time before making a move). That led to the tie-breakers.

First, there were to be four games of rapid chess (of considerably shorter duration than the classical variety).  If the scores were still level, blitz chess — games of even shorter time control — would be played. It looked like the blitz games would be necessary: the first three rapid games were drawn, and it seemed the fourth would be, too.

Risk and reward

Ding could have easily settled for it. But, instead of opting for a line that would lead to a draw by repetition of moves, he played a bold move with his rook, in response to a check by Nepomniachtchi with the queen — a move Ding’s predecessor Magnus Carlsen described as “self-pinning for immortality.”

Ding was taking a risk. He clearly wanted to try for a win and thus clinch the title without entering the blitz games. That move, in itself, wasn’t a winning one, by any stretch of the imagination, but it paved the way for, to borrow from Carlsen, Ding’s immortality. Then Nepomniachtchi missed some moves that could have restored equality on the board.

But, then, Ding was destined to become the World champion. A series of incidents indicated as much.

First, he got a chance to play the Candidates tournament — the qualifier for the World title match — because Sergey Karjakin was banned by FIDE, the world chess governing body, for six months for supporting Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Karjakin, who unsuccessfully challenged Carlsen for the 2016 World championship, used to play for Ukraine until 2009.

But, in order to make it to the Candidates tournament, Ding had to play 28 rated classical games in a little over a month. Before that, because of China’s Covid-induced travel restrictions, he was forced to miss the World Cup and the three-tournament FIDE Grand Prix series — events from which he could have qualified for the Candidates.

He finished second in the Candidates in Madrid only because of his win in the final round against Hikaru Nakamura. The tournament was won by Nepomniachtchi, who thus earned the right to challenge Carlsen for the World title for the second time in a row.

Then, Carlsen, the World champion since 2013, pulled out from the match, citing a lack of motivation. FIDE decided to go ahead with the World Championship and announced that the players that had finished first and second at the Candidates would be the contestants. So, from out of nowhere, Ding found himself in with a chance to become the 17th World chess champion.

Most experts, including Anand, had favoured Nepomniachtchi, not least because of the match experience he had gained against Carlsen. And it was the Russian who took the lead repeatedly. 

Fighting from underneath

In the classical matches, Ding had to come from behind three times. He showed tremendous fighting spirit. He refused to give up, and frustrated Nepomniachtchi, never allowing him to consolidate his lead.

It may not have been the greatest of World title matches in terms of quality — there were too many mistakes from both players — but it was undoubtedly one of the most exciting. Six of the 14 classical games produced decisive results. In 2018, all 12 games between Carlsen and Fabiano Caruana were drawn. Two years earlier, all but two of the 14 were draws.

With the massive spike in interest in chess, the 2023 contest would probably have been the most followed World title match in history. The fans would have loved it too, with all its twists and the fascinating climax.

Yes, Carlsen did cast an imposing shadow. “But that wasn’t Ding’s fault,” Grandmaster R.B. Ramesh, one of India’s most successful coaches, tells The Hindu. “We have to accept Ding as the World champion and Carlsen as the world’s best player. I don’t think Carlsen would be coming back to the World Championship cycle in the current format.”

The moment, at any rate, belongs to Ding. There is, to his ascent to the throne of world chess, a certain romance. Not just because of all those circumstances, but also because of him being the first ever male World champion from China — the world’s most populous country until it was overtaken by India a fortnight ago — where chess was banned during China’s Cultural Revolution (1966 to 1976).

Ding’s generation — the golden one in Chinese chess — came after the Big Dragon Project that was launched to raise the level of the game in the country to global standards. He played a key role in making China a powerhouse in international chess.

Ding’s peak rating (2816) is the 10th (joint) highest of all time. He is only 30. He could get even better.

After his greatest moment, he revealed how he came back into the match. “I remembered how [writer and philosopher] Albert Camus talks about the concept of resistance,” he said in an interview with El Pais. “The idea is that if you see that you cannot win, do everything in your power to resist. And that memory gave me the determination I needed.”

That determination would give Ding beautiful memories for a lifetime.