The Chinese grandmaster evens the score in the fourth game against the Russian Ian Nepomniachtchi
Not only football is a state of mind. After putting the debate on mental health in chess on the board, the Chinese grandmaster Ding Liren He has shown his ability to recover at the World Cup in Kazakhstan. First he confessed that he was depressed and absent. Then he played like a flan and lost the second game with white. Many began to dig his grave rather hastily.
the russian Ian Nepomniachtchi, whom we have seen in some meme smacking his lips like Silvestre the cat against Tweety, played fast and imprecise this Thursday. He demonstrated that among his character flaws, impulsiveness stands out. He lost in 47 moves, although his defeat was on the horizon long before, after Ding punished a tactical error with a brilliant and definitive material sacrifice: the game was also a small defeat of materialism, perhaps dialectical.
The Chess World Cup thus regains equality, after four games. With the carousel of emotions lived, the balance now tilts on the Chinese side. Anish Giri6, world number 6, wrote that after Ding’s victory he gives him an 80% chance of winning the title. A few plays earlier, the Dutchman acidly criticized one of his moves, which he considered an obvious strategic error. There are ten rounds left, if no one goes down first by a more forceful KO.
The truth is that Ding Liren had already shown signs of his return in the previous game. After losing the second as White, playing the third as Black was like walking a tightrope. He played as in his best days, when they chained a hundred games in a row without knowing defeat, and he drew without difficulty. Then he declared that he was better thanks to his friends: “They have helped me deal with my emotional problems. Now I feel more comfortable on stage,” he said at a press conference.
The difference between being and being
The courage to face the looks is not a minor matter. In the early games, the Chinese spent almost more time in his break room than he did on the Astan stage. The public attended the show for too many minutes, unthinkable in any other sport, that neither of the two contenders was present. The pieces were still on the board, yes, waiting for the humans to appear to change their places. As soon as they executed their move, they returned to their cubicles. Ding protected himself from the world and Nepo took the opportunity to eat, perhaps another of his defects as an elite athlete.
At the beginning of the World Cup, DIng Liren was there but it wasn’t him. Sometimes he wasn’t even there. In a few hours we went to see him eagerly again, almost always in front of his soldiers, not as a general giving orders from a distant rear. It is no coincidence that ‘menu’ in English also means ‘pieces’.
If we have learned something in these four games, on the other hand, it is that it is better not to make too many forecasts, although the bad reputation of the Russian candidate floats around after conceding a defeat, when he usually gets lazy. Friday will be a day off and they will both do much more than lie on the sofa to watch TV.
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