One of the peculiarities of the mental sport of chess is that games are usually not played to the end, but the loser gives up beforehand. That’s how it was when Ding Liren won the biggest title of his career in Astana, Kazakhstan. On April 30, 2023, his opponent in the World Cup final, the visibly frustrated Jan Nepomnyashchi, shifted restlessly in his chair. Then he held out his hand to Ding. After 14 rounds of classical chess and four rounds of rapid chess, the Chinese was declared world champion. Ding’s reaction: He grabbed his opponent’s hand. He then placed his head in his left hand and remained there for a few seconds. He left the chessboard shortly afterwards, shaking his head.
In the next few weeks, Ding Liren, 32, will play for the world title again. Take a look the pictures From 2023 onwards, the thought inevitably arises that he already suspected back then that his triumph would not only bring him joy.
Ding, who has been struggling with psychological problems for a long time and is unusually open about them, has had two hospital stays since his World Cup victory and is still taking medication for depression to this day. After his triumph, he disappeared completely from the scene for nine months. Since he’s been back he’s been playing poorly. His last victory in classical chess dated January 27thwas almost ten months ago now. Afterwards he sat on the board 28 times, he didn’t win 28 times, and he slipped to 22nd place in the world rankings. The Elo rating, which measures the playing strength of chess players, is almost 100 points worse than at its peak. These are alarming numbers for a world champion. “My game has a lot of flaws,” he said recently in an interview“in all areas.”
:The world champion who was gone for now
Ding Liren replaced Magnus Carlsen as world chess champion a year ago. After that the Chinese disappeared for a long time. Why? Encounter a very quiet champion.
Ding’s title defense match begins on Monday. In Singapore he meets Gukesh Dommaraju; Up to 14 games with long thinking times are pending. The Indian prevailed at the Candidates Tournament in April against established players such as Nepomnyashchi, 34, Hikaru Nakamura, 36, and Fabiano Caruana, 32. That was a big surprise for everyone, apart from the self-confident Gukesh himself. Now, against Ding, he is the big favorite.
Of course, this isn’t just due to Ding’s poor form – his opponent also has an excellent year behind him. At the Chess Olympiad in Budapest, the last major tournament before the World Cup, Gukesh led the Indian national team to gold, winning eight out of ten games. Ding, on the other hand, also remained winless in Hungary.
“When it comes to decisive moments in games, he is currently not ready for it,” says Croatian grandmaster Davorin Kuljasevic in an interview with SZ about Ding. The 38-year-old has written several successful chess books, including a sporting biography about Ding Liren, which was published shortly after his 2023 World Cup victory.
Once you have reached the summit, you no longer have any potential for improvement
Kuljasevic became aware of Ding when he wanted to improve his own defense strategy 16 years ago and, while researching the databases, came across the games of the then 15-year-old Chinese player, who was still largely unknown in the chess world. He regularly defeated supposedly stronger players. He had never seen some of his opening lines before, says Kuljasevic. It was clear to him very early on that Ding had the potential to be a world leader.
And in fact: things went uphill steeply. Between August 2017 and November 2018, the Chinese went 100 games in a row without defeat. At times he was considered the most promising candidate to overthrow world champion Magnus Carlsen after ten years. In fact, it was only his decision not to defend his title last year that made it possible for Ding to play in his first World Cup match: Because Carlsen was bored with the format and no longer wanted to defend his title, Ding slipped into the World Cup match against Nepomnyashchi as second in the Candidates Tournament. He won and was suddenly faced with the question to which all great champions have to find an answer: what now?
When he became world champion, Ding Liren was 30 years old. He started playing chess at the age of four. But now, for the first time in his life, there was no longer any potential for improvement in sport: once you have reached the summit, things can only go downhill. The former world champion Viswanathan Anand recently told SZ that after his first World Cup victory in 2007, he didn’t know “what to do with myself now.” During his career, Anand says, he always had the feeling that certain things had lost their meaning. Anand’s successor Carlsen also cited a lack of motivation as one of the reasons why he no longer wanted to defend his title. And for Bobby Fischer, who was only 29 years old at the time, the 1972 World Cup victory was immediately the highlight and the end of his chess career.
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The currently strongest chess nation in the world? India. Both teams win gold medals at the Olympics. Gukesh Dommaraju, only 18, is the big favorite for the World Cup title. And there is a special reason for the boom.
Ding Liren recently said that he no longer feels the same ambition to win as before. “The pressure for his title was too much for him,” believes his biographer Kuljasevic. The public attention after the World Cup victory probably also contributed to this. The always reserved Ding is hardly present on social media, including Chinese ones. He said he didn’t want a close relationship with his fans at a meeting with the SZ in February. If they write him messages on social media, it puts a strain on him. But of course a world champion receives fan mail.
“Ding plays without self-confidence,” says Kuljasevic. For a long time it was a particular strength of the world champion to take risks in the final. He also ultimately won the World Cup against Nepomnyashchi thanks to his courage: in the decisive final game, Ding only had 90 seconds left when he suddenly moved his rook to g6. He took his opponent by surprise – Nepomnyashchi made a mistake and lost. Ding is currently a long way from such brilliant moments; recently, with regard to the World Cup match, he said: “I’m worried that I could lose very badly.”
The forecasts are correspondingly clear, with Kuljasevic saying: “Being the outsider doesn’t matter.” It could even be an advantage because it reduces the pressure. And Kuljasevic doesn’t think the defending champion has as much of a chance against Gukesh as some others: “His opponent is inexperienced and often finds himself in a time crunch.” Ding could exploit these weaknesses if he managed to keep the games balanced for as long as possible.
And if things fail as expected? Then perhaps he will remember the words of Boris Spasski, the man who lost his world title to Bobby Fischer 52 years ago: “The three years as world champion were the unhappiest time of my life. After the defeat, the happiest began.”
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