“Ding Liren’s Loss is Suspicious”, says the Russian Chess Fed President
The World Chess Championship match between then-World Champion and now Former World Champion Ding Liren, and the new World Champion and then challenger Gukesh D concluded on December 12th in favour of the challenger, who won the final game of the match to break the tie of 6.5-6.5 after 13 games!
To put things into perspective, first, here’s the position in which the Former World Champion blundered:
As any professional or semi-professional chess player would tell you, the position is drawn. White is a pawn down but white’s pawn is on a dark square, protecting it from any threats from black’s bishop. White can manoeuvre with his bishop and black has no prospects of making progress. However, because white’s bishop is on a8, a rook exchange in this very position would lead to a lost pawn ending for white since white won’t be able to prevent the bishop exchange following that. Had the bishop been on any other square, such as c6, it would still be a draw after the rooks are exchanged. This very subtlety was missed by Ding and he went for Rf2?! offering the exchange of rooks, missing Bd5! The blunder seems very elementary but it cannot be overlooked that Ding Liren had been struggling with apparent confidence and mentality issues when the Grandmaster was consistently observed to be underestimating his advantages in the post-match press conferences throughout the match by the commentators. To Gukesh’s credit, the 18-year-old champion held his mental fortitude and kept his composure when it mattered the most.
The Russian Chess Federation President and FIDE honorary member Andrei Filatov had some things to about Ding’s last game slip-up. While speaking to Russian news agency TASS, Filatov noted that the manner in which Ding lost seemed “Deliberate” to him. Filatov suggested FIDE to investigate the matter and said, “The actions of the Chinese chess player on the decisive period are extremely suspicious and require a separate investigation by FIDE. It is difficult for a pioneer in losing the position in which Ding Liren was. The defeat of the Chinese chess player in today’s game raises a lot of questions and looks like a deliberate one.”
Not only Andrei Filatov but some other notable figures had opinions on the final game loss, notably Former World Champion Vladimir Kramnik. Kramnik expressing his disappointment termed it as the “End of chess” in one of his posts on X.
FIDE has been silent on the “wild” speculations of it being a deliberate move by Liren. In fact, FIDE President Arkady Dvorkovich suggestively turned down the speculations, stating that ‘mistakes are part and parcel of a game’. It only remains to be seen if FIDE’s honorary member’s suggestion for an investigation is going to be acted upon or not.
