The Nepomniachtchi-Ding World Championship Match Starts Tomorrow
Carlsen's reign, if not his era of dominance, is about to end.
It’s almost time for the World Chess Championship to begin, and it will be the first one since 2012 without the current champion, Magnus Carlsen. A pity, perhaps, but it’s reality. On the other hand, it’s as good as it can be without Carlsen: world #2 Ian Nepomniachtchi of Russia against world #3 Ding Liren of China.
It’s a 14-game match (not counting tiebreaks, if necessary), starting tomorrow/today (Easter Sunday for the non-Orthodox churches, unfortunately) and continuing to April 30th at the latest. For those of you who are young or otherwise new to the game and only familiar with the fast time controls characteristic of online play, the challengers will fight it out with a classical time control. Each side has two hours for the first 40 moves, then an hour for the next 20 moves, and finally 15 more minutes with a 30 second bonus from move 61 on. Some of you may find this agonizingly slow, and I think that even old-timers (in both the absolute and relative senses) may need a couple of games to get used to it. It’s worth it, though: it may not be chess at its most exciting, but it is chess at its human best. (At least when the game isn’t settled by the players’ homework with the computer - which is, frankly, one of the big reasons why faster time controls have become increasingly popular.)
Nepomniachtchi is a slight favorite: he’s higher-rated, he has been more active, he won the last two Candidates tournaments, and has experience of playing in a world championship match. (It wasn’t a good experience, but that should immunize him from making a slew of practical errors this time around.) I also suspect that Nepo also enjoys access to more top-notch seconds than Ding, but that’s just a guess. What might be known is that Richard Rapport and Nikita Vitiugov are working for Nepo, while Ding’s seconds (all of them?) are “far away”. Presumably they are all and only Chinese, but, again, that’s speculation on my part.
The match is held in Astana, Kazhakstan, and play starts at 3 p.m. local time. That’s not so bad for Europeans - it translates to 11 a.m. CEST - but rather unfortunate for the Americas: it’s 5 a.m. ET/2 a.m. PT. The schedule for play is two days on, one day off, except that after game 7 there’s another day off. Nepo will have White in the odd-numbered games, starting of course with game 1. One other bit of info: the prize fund is two million euros, with 60% going to the winner.
So, readers, two bits of info from you. First, make your predictions! Second, for more than a decade I’ve done especially deep coverage for paid subscribers - deeper analysis than on the blog, with videos sent directly. I’ve been very busy with other matters lately, but if enough of you are interested, I’ll dragoon myself into it. Here’s my thought: we can do this two different ways: $35 for the standalone package; alternatively, you can sign up for a one-year subscription to this Substack blog for at least $50 (I’ll figure out some additional perks like monthly chats). If enough of you express an interest, I’ll do it; if not, then I’m still going to cover the match - just without videos and in only moderate detail. If you’re interested, you can post a comment, but it would be better if you sent an email to me at “thechessmind” [at] substack-dot-com. (I trust that you all know how to translate that into a proper email address; the foregoing is to avoid spam bots.)
Reportedly, Richard Rapport is a second of Ding Liren, not Nepo.
Some Chinese players have worked closely before with non-Chinese players.
Wang Hao was a second of Levon Aronian.
Some Chinese players (such as Li Chao and Wang Yue) are personally close; others are not.
Ding Liren may have chosen his second(s) for reasons other than nationality.
Interesting interview of Dubov concerning the match:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nq9ueqiLKw
He said some interesting things about the time control, but what I found notable was his view that it might mark the beginning of a rejuvenation of the world championship.
According to him, and I suppose he should know, many top players were just not that interested in the championship cycle, for three reasons. First, the financial and opportunity cost of preparing seriously; second, the randomness of the qualification process; and third, and perhaps most of all, the fact that at the end of it you were mostly likely only going to get beaten by Carlsen.
Now that Carlsen is out of the picture, Dubov thought that quite a few people would be thinking about the championship more earnestly. He half seriously thought that even Anand might make a comeback!