World Championship, Game 14 (Updated)
There's no education in the second kick of a mule; on to tiebreaks!
Chess is brutal, and after today’s 90-move marathon both players are very likely exhausted physically, mentally, and emotionally. Ding Liren had to work harder, as he was forced to defend for roughly the last 70 moves of the game, solving difficult problems most of the way. For Ian Nepomniachtchi, the exhaustion will be primarily psychological, in coping with the fact that his 36th move gave away a winning advantage that would very likely have given him the World Championship title. Ding found a very nice idea that demonstrated the error of Nepo’s hasty and slack 36…e5, and while he still had to defend for a very long time after that, he always kept the draw in hand, and so the classical portion of the match has finished with the players in a 7-7 tie.
One might have expected Ding to do the pressing, but Nepomniachtchi was well-prepared in the opening, and when Ding went for the rash attacking plan of 12.Ng5 and 13.h4 Nepo’s accurate reaction left White having to fight for equality. He managed to fight back, but then fresh inaccuracies on moves 19 and 21 followed by outright errors on moves 30 and 34 left him at death’s door. Fortunately for Ding and his supporters, Nepo made the error mentioned in the last paragraph, and the game finally ended peacefully, after well over six hours of play.
Ian Nepomniachtchi led by a point after 11 of 14 games, had winning advantages in games 12 and 14 and a clear advantage at one point in game 13, and despite all of that his World Championship match with Ding Liren is tied. Tomorrow/today (Sunday) they must therefore go to tiebreaks; the fifth championship match this century to do so. (Vladimir Kramnik defeated Veselin Topalov 2.5-1.5 in 2006, Viswanathan Anand defeated Boris Gelfand in 2012 by the same margin, and in 2016 and 2018 Magnus Carlsen defeated Sergey Karjakin and Fabiano Caruana 3-1 and 3-0, respectively.)
The format, to recap the last post, is as follows. First, a best-of-four game mini-match at a 25’+10” time control. If that’s not enough, then two 5’+3” games. Not enough? Two more 5’+3” games. In the very unlikely event that they’re still tied, then it’s sudden death at 3’+2”, with the players switching colors after a draw, ad infinitum. There is no Armageddon game, thankfully.
Meanwhile, here is the marathon game 14, with my analysis.
UPDATES:
(1) I forgot to explain the subtitle. The point is that getting kicked by a mule once should be enough to learn one’s lesson; the person who gets kicked the second time is (normally) a fool. The application is that Nepomniachtchi was kicked by the mule - hard - in game 12, losing a winning position in significant part due to his haste in a complicated position where he had plenty of time. Unfortunately, he did not adequately learn the lesson, and squandering the win with 36…e5? (??) was kick #2. As I point out in the annotations, Ding’s 38.b6! was beautiful, but he was already drawing even after a couple of prosaic alternatives. (It’s also worth noting that 30…Nxc5 was a similar error. 30…g6 was probably winning, while White should have held after 30…Nxc5, which was also quickly played by Nepomniachtchi.
(2) I’ve updated the game file. The corrections are minor, but important enough that you should prefer the new one to the original.
(3) The players drew lots for colors after the (mostly awful) press conference. Ding will have White in games 1 and 3; I believe that they will draw for colors for the first set of 5’+3” blitz games, if it gets that far.
Hi, Dennis: I guess in "...and when Ding went for the rash attacking plan of 12.Ng5 and 13.h4 Ding’s accurate reaction left White having to fight for equality" you mean Nepo's accurate reaction. After 36...Rb3! White can also try 37.Rh8, but the quietus to tha tis 37...Rd4! when White can shed a pawn and hope to regroup by 38.Bc2 Bxb5+ 39. Ke1 Rb2 40. Rc3, but what kills all White's play and clamps down is, ironically, 40...e5! when 41.Rxh6 Ra2 is essentially mate.