A long grindy endgame. This match has had everything.
wow, game 12!! 6:6 again, Ding looked lost and Nepo like the next WC. Some quick moves by Nepo and he threw away the game. Crazy…
Wow. I just watched this video showing Nepo realizing that he’d blundered away the game (and possibly the world championship). You can see his heart breaking on camera. Poor guy.
Congratulations to Ding Liren, World Champion!
Crazy match. Bummer for Nepo, who seems like a nice person. I guess Russia will have to wait a bit longer. Congrats to Liren.
What a match. I don’t think we will ever see something like that again. Just incredible.
I was on team Ding - but man, you have to feel bad for Nepo. They both deserved to win imo.
Congratulations to Ding, the first world champion from China.
The decisive game was crazy, with Nepo missing a late, nearly impossible-to-find bishop sacrifice that would have drawn the game.
I can’t imagine that any future world championships in my lifetime will have the twists and turns or the brilliancies and blunders that this one did.
I haven’t looked at any of the games yet, or really read anything about the match except for the posts here. So I have no idea about the quality, though at that level it is beyond most mortals without engines telling them all of the mistakes, but that seems like the most decisive games ever scored in the shorter match format. What a fight.
A Missouri federal judge has dismissed (with prejudice) Hans Niemann’s $100 million lawsuit against Magnus, Hikaru, and others. Here’s Hikaru’s reaction video:
I don’t think anyone thought this had much of a chance.
Suddenly I’m seeing chess everywhere in popular media! PBS news hour ran a segment on why young people are so enthralled with chess. I see chess more and more in my twitter feed. (I guess it helps that I follow Garry Kasparov. I met him once while watching the chess championship in Sevilla decades ago. If you’ve never been to a live championship, put it on your bucket list.) And best of all, chess put in not one but two appearances in the most recent episode of Star Trek Strange New Worlds. Being vague to avoid spoilers.
Here’s a nice one I played in April versus a lovely opponent from France, as black. I like how the board evolves over time. It has a kind of “swish” to it.
69% accuracy vs 76.3%
A double-double by Carlsen this year at the Rapid/Blitz. He may have given up the classic Chess WC, but he is still uncontested the best at this game. Wonder if he’ll try to contest the WC again, knowing he won’t be facing someone he’s already beaten for the title.
Despite scoring a remarkable 16/21 in the blitz, with 12 victories, 8 draws and only 1 loss throughout the two days of action, Carlsen lost 1.1 rating points — which goes to show just how stunningly high his 2887 rating actually is.
This bit is pretty crazy - losing rating points when winning the world championship.
I do wish they change the rules regarding offering draws. There were some very anemic games between some of the other contenders where draws were offered in the first handful of moves.
Honestly, it sounded more like he was over the enormous time commitment. When you’re training to be world champion, it consumes every aspect of your life. I got more retirement vibes than anything, although certainly time away from such rigorous training schedules would help with motivation on a second attempt. The fact that he’s still maintaining his lead in the faster categories speaks to his remaining advantage on raw intuition. Of course, Hikaru wins some of those, like the Speed Chess Championship, but Magnus narrowly edged him out this year.
I don’t think Carlsen is going to retire anytime soon - at least not while he remains the undisputed #1 and still feels like he’s near the top of his abilities (and winning both blitz and rapid for the second time in a row - and with pretty clear margins, shows he’s still very much at the top).
He was very much over the time commitment, but a big part of why he lacked the motivation was the “everything to lose, nothing to gain” aspect. He - and all of us - know that Carlsen is better than Nepo, Karjakin, Caruana, Nakamura. Another WC victory against those guys is meaningless because it would be 100% expected. Carlsen has won everything - he’s there for the new challenges. He specifically name-dropped Alireza Firouzja as the contender he would like to meet in a WC match.
It wouldn’t surprise me if the chance of playing Ding Liren for the title would motivate Carlsen to a come-back, only to ditch it again during the next candidates. Of course, the question is whether Ding Liren will defend his title considering how he has disappeared from everything since he won.
In a sense he already has. He has no desire to work that hard again, but he still enjoys playing for playing’s sake.
Eh, I wouldn’t call it that. It’s not long ago that he stated that he could easily see himself playing until 2031 or thereabouts - as long as he feels he is competitive. I could see him retiring if he loses the #1 ranking due to being outplayed by younger players. He’s just not interested in the huge preparations required for traditional WC matches.
That is exactly what I mean by having no desire to work that hard again.