Ding resurfaces in the Chess World Cup: he returns to the chair and achieves a soothing draw thanks to his friends and Bob Dylan | Chess Update

There are draws that taste like victory. Like that of Liren Ding with the black pieces against Ian Niepómniashi in the third game of the World Chess Championship in Astana (Kazakhstan) after losing the second on Monday, very depressed. In less than 48 hours, the Chinese has been transformed: now he smiles effortlessly, he is almost always on stage and not in the dressing room, and he plays much better. On Thursday he will have the initiative for White in the fourth of the 14 scheduled games with the score against 1-2 and two million euros at stake (60% for the winner).

“They offered me a psychologist, but I turned it down. It was my friends who fixed my emotional problem,” Ding explained, radiant, at the press conference, while Niepómniashi, about three meters away, made a face as if he did not understand the sudden metamorphosis of his rival, who added that he had also helped him. Blowing in the wind (blowing in the wind), by Bob Dylan. Shortly before he had come up to even say that he was not happy with the result because he had come to have an advantage. The contrast with Monday’s Ding was so great that you had to rub your eyes to make sure it wasn’t a dream.

The third round began with the kick-off of a Kazakh national hero, astronaut Talgat Musabayev, who has participated in several prominent project expeditions. soyuz in the days of the Soviet Union. Apparently, chess and cosmonautics mix very well because the American Neil Armstrong, the first human being to set foot on the Moon, was also a chess player, like another hero of the USSR, Vitali Sebastiánov, who also later presided over the Soviet Federation of Chess was a close friend of Anatoly Karpov; so much so that he was seen crying through the halls of the Tchaikovsky Theater in Moscow on November 9, 1985, when his idol was dethroned by Gari Kasparov.

That special guest gave the perfect footing to wonder if anything would continue on the Moon, as in the first two games. Niepómniashi’s first move fueled that belief because he surprised the Chinese by advancing the queen’s pawn two steps (1 d4) instead of the king (1 e4), which was his favorite opening. But it took Ding just 30 seconds to concede that small blow – you can see for sure that he was very prepared against 1 e4 – and he began to play with great ease, very convinced of what he was doing and hardly leaving the stage, except for small escapades.

That attitude fits well with the anger that the Chinese delegation showed on Tuesday morning about Ding’s attitude in the second round, when he stayed up to 27 minutes in his dressing room despite the fact that it was his turn to play. Aside from Bob Dylan and his friends, he can also see by the way that they gave him a clear warning to change his behavior urgently.

Did. And, indeed, there was a moment when he gave the feeling that he was playing to win, without settling for a draw. But, beyond small inaccuracies, Niepómniashi remained solid until the distribution of the point by triple repetition of plays, and the movement 30 and after little more than three hours of interesting fight.

Niepómniashi did not sound very convinced when EL PAÍS asked him why he had not achieved any advantage after following by heart the first 16 movements of a game by Ding against the Dutchman Anish Giri, sixth in the world, in 2022: “The Queen’s Gambit is a type of opening that produces very even positions if both sides play well”, he explained, which makes little sense because the Russian’s 17th move was worse than Giri’s.

The most logical interpretation is that Niepómniashi proposed a calm game, without preparing it very thoroughly, with the double objective of surprising his opponent in the choice of the opening and putting the rod to see if he would bite (he made a mistake), given his obvious state of fragility on Sunday and Monday. But lo and behold, the Asian fell suddenly from the Moon to Earth at the speed of a spaceship. It’s not hard to imagine him singing Blowing in the wind While returning to his hotel, he is proud even though he has one point less. But there are 11 rounds left in a fight that was supposed to be very tough, and perhaps it is despite everything.

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