The World Championship Match between Yan Nepomnyaschym and Ding Liren. In the first game, the Russian played with White: he had the advantage and had much more time, but the Chinese grandmaster defended well and, despite the time trouble, was able to equalize the position. The result is a draw.
Especially for Sport24, the analysis of the starting game was carried out by the ex-head of the FIDE online commission Ilya Gorodetsky.
– We can say that the game turned out to be quite typical for the start of the World Championship Match – it had its own intrigue, plot. Ian played a rare variation: as the eight-time Russian champion Peter Svidler said, it is obvious that this variation will not be seen once more in the Match. This is obviously not the main line of Nepomniachtchi’s opening preparation, but simply a variation where he gets a stable minimum advantage and plays absolutely risk-free – no special chances of winning, but no risk.
Ding Liren like he thought for a long time, but at the same time he refused some binding, at least relatively risky continuations several times. As a result, his position became clearly worse, although it was difficult to break through it. When Yang broke into the opponent’s camp with his queen, it seemed that Black had really big difficulties. But an interesting psychological observation: from that moment on, Dean played very strongly, he defended himself in the best possible way. Around the 29th move, Nepomniachtchi might probably create more serious problems for his opponent – he probably should have played with the bishop or even better with the queen on c7 with a transition to a better endgame.
After 28. Queen b8, commentators have already begun to discuss whether Ding Liren will be able to rebuild following losing the first game.
It seemed to me that Nepomniachtchi really wanted to keep the queens on the board longer – following all, he always strives for the initiative, for attacking the king, he just feels more comfortable playing with queens. Plus, at that moment, Ding had 12 moves and 12 minutes (which is not much), while Ian had half an hour more. Evidently, Yang was counting on the Chinese chess player to misunderstand somewhere in time trouble and make a mistake. But Dean played this segment of the game very strongly: he didn’t seem to do anything spectacular, but he defended himself very accurately and clearly neutralized all of Nepomniachtchi’s ideas. By the control position, as they say, withered; it became obvious that in a few moves an agreement for a draw would follow – and so it happened.
Black pieces are breaking free, the game has leveled off
Was Ian underwhelmed or was Dean remarkably accurate?
“None of these reasons walk alone. Nepomniachtchi, probably, might have raised more serious problems somewhere, perhaps he should have played f4 earlier – around the 22nd move. Somewhere a little Yang let out a little, well, yes, Ding Liren showed tenacity in defense.
Here, instead of the unhurried 22. The e2-knight, one might try to rush forward – 22. The f4-pawn!?
Dean spent most of the game in the break room and in a jacket, explaining it this way: “Because he was very anxious.”
“I think it’s very difficult for us mere mortals to understand. All the great champions unanimously say that the World Championship Match is psychologically exhausting and scary. It is known that Anatoly Karpov, for example, during the championship match might lose 10 kg, at the late stage of his career he might not sleep at all and involved sleep specialists and psychologists to fight terrible insomnia. This is such an extreme concentrated intellectual tension that is absolutely exhausting.
It is not surprising that all this is hard for the Chinese, in this sense he did well today, he defended half a point with Black. Tomorrow he will play with white: to be honest, since he feels so shitty, then tomorrow, very likely, he will simply quickly force some simplifications and make a draw – it is hard to imagine that a Chinese chess player will come to his senses in one day and become such a peppy one. If I were forced to make a prediction, I would say that tomorrow there will be a fairly quick draw.
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