World Chess Championship 2023 Round 4 Live: Ding Liren with white takes on Ian Nepomniachtchi in Astana

At World Chess Championship, stressed and downcast Ding Liren is grappling with much more than Ian Nepomniachtchi. (Photo: FIDE/ANNA SHTOURMAN)
Nepomniachtchi vs Ding LIVE: Our column GM Pravin Thipsay weighs in on Game 1 and 2
Analysing Game 1 for The Indian Express, GM Pravin Thipsay wrote that the 8th move of the game itself it was apparent that the game was staggering its way to a draw.
“d3 is a normal move on move 8, but playing d4 on the eighth move, Nepomniachtchi made it clear that he was playing a sort of impotent and unambitious position.
He was just trying to see if his Chinese opponent blunders or something. It was not ambitious play at all the Russian: wrote Thipsay, who added: “Perhaps, Nepomniachtchi was just trying to see how bad his opponent is in some simple strategic positions. Maybe that was the type of test he was taking of his opponent.”
But Thipsay was scathing in his opinion about Game 2, which he called the “worst game of chess played in hory of World Championships.”
“You could know Game 2 was going to end badly for Ding the moment he played the fourth move. He played h3, a move played only two amateurs in the past. It is a waste of precious time and achieves nothing in return. It’s a very strange move that gives away all the advantage and position to the opponent, rather than gaining an advantage while playing with white. If I had seen this move played in a club match, I would say that the player is not a good one.”
Stressed and downcast Ding Liren grappling with much more than Ian Nepomniachtchi
Ding Liren looked lost. It was a fairly simple, release-the-pressure sorta question, posed a Twitter user at the press conference on Monday: “What would you be if not a chess player?”
Ian Nepomniachtchi would go first, saying how there are many teachers in his family and that he might have become one himself.
Ding thought long and hard. For 25 seconds, he struggled to think of an alternate career option before managing, “It’s hard to say”.
At the same press conference, he had been asked if he felt better while playing game 2 than he did in game 1. Once again, he could only say: “It’s hard to say”.
Monday had been a demoralising day for Ding, who had lost Game 2 to his Russian rival in 29 moves. But you needn’t look at the scoreboard to know what had happened; one look at the body language of both contenders at the post-game media interaction at Astana’s St Regis Hotel would have sufficed. [Read More]