Win after win – an infinite roller-coaster in Astana!

What a match in Astana! The FIDE World Championship is heating after Nepomniachtchi got a lead in Game 5, but Ding strokes back in Game 6. Let’s discuss these fascinating last 2 rounds.

Game 5

Following his defeat in Game 4 and the rest day, Nepomniachtchi scored an exceptional win to take the lead again.

Nepomniachtchi went to the board well-prepared and blitzed the first 22 moves. They reached a line of Ruy Lopez, where Nepomniachtchi knew exactly what to do, while Ding was struggling a bit and spent a lot of his time. Later we could see how Nepomniachtchi slowly outplayed Ding by getting more and more initiative and preventing Ding from any counterplay. Ding made some slight inaccuracies in the middle game and before they reached the time control after 40 moves, he already had a losing position. In the end, Nepomniachtchi created a mating net and Ding accepted his fate and resigned.

This game definitely increased Nepomniachtchi’s self-confidence, and he definitely did not expect the next round to be so dreadful.

Game 6

One quality of the next World Champion should be the ability to recover quickly after a loss in a previous game. Ding Liren, with an unreadable face and fighting spirit, showed up to the next game and went for the London System, which is very popular among a lot of chess players. The players are constantly jumping between different openings and giving us a nice show to watch.

In the game, both followed a solid theoretical path with a comfortable position. Nepomniachtchi played a very committing and not-so-good 22… e5 in the middle game, where suddenly the evaluation of the position was in Ding’s favour. Ding found several very precise manoeuvres and little by little increased his advantage. Later, Nepomniachtchi created a passed pawn on the a-file but had to deal with unpleasant threads on the kingside. His position unnoticeably went from slightly worse to much worse. In move 42, Ding found a stunning and devastating combination by playing 42. Qc7.

Ding played 43. Ng6! with no hesitation and had Nepomniachtchi resign. After the game in the press conference, Nepomniachtchi sadly admitted: “I played one of my worst games ever. Every move was bad.” On the other hand, Ding finally smiled and said that the loss did not influence him in the previous game and was in very good shape during the game.

The games fascinated a lot of top players so far. Anand, for example, expressed his enthusiasm on Twitter.

After a rest day, we expect today another great game in Astana. Keep watching with us and stay tuned for more articles!

Author

STELLA SÁŇKOVÁ