It took tiebreakers to separate the two titans, but Ding Liren ultimately defeated Ian Nepomniachtchi on April 30 to become the new world chess champion, the successor of Magnus Carlsen, who declined to defend his title. It was a fireworks-filled matchup with many decisive bouts, but it all came down to the fourth and final rapid tiebreaker in the end, where the Chinese grandmaster triumphed with the Black pieces to earn the greatest honor in competitive chess.
Ding Liren had to make multiple comebacks to win a match he was not even supposed to compete in originally. His grit-filled Cinderella run contrasts greatly with his opponent’s, who has now lost four world championship finals in various formats, and back-to-back affairs competing for this very crown. Since it’s unlikely that Carlsen would make a renewed title unless significant format changes are made, Nepomniachtchi is now Ding’s most likely challenger for the next cycle.
The absence of Carlsen made this “best of the rest” match entirely unpredictable, and it turned out to be a much more open and fireworks-filled affair than those involving the Norwegian phenom. The players experimented with various openings and novel ideas, and their flaws and psychological weaknesses allowed for openings and six decisive games out of fourteen in total in the classical portion, just as many as Carlsen’s four world championship title defences between 2014 and 2021 combined.
Ding Liren got off to a tough start in the match, losing the second game with the White pieces and having to fight back over and over again after defeats in games five and seven to push the series to tiebreakers. There, three draws were followed by a decisive game 18, a dramatic 68-move affair where Nepomniachtchi proved powerless to stop his opponent’s passed pawns, resigning as he faced the prospect of multiple new queens arriving on the board.
Carlsen quickly congratulated his successor on Twitter, joining the chorus of the rest of the chess world.
Related: World Chess Championship 2023: Schedule, players, and storylines
After his disastrous attempt against Magnus Carlsen in the 2021 World Chess Championship match in Dubai, where he collapsed after a strong first half of the match, Ian Nepomniachtchi made history by winning back-to-back Candidates Tournaments, earning the right to challenge for the title again. With strong tournament runs elsewhere (and other devastating losses in the 2021 World Rapid and 2022 World Fischer Random championship finals), he was seen as the slight favorite heading into the event on form.
China’s highest-rated male chess player was rated #2 on the world rankings heading into the year, but it seemed like a lack of competitive play during the pandemic could have capsized his opportunity. First, he missed out on a chance to compete for an invitation to the Candidates Tournament, the event deciding the world championship challenger because he was unable to secure visas for the relevant FIDE circuit events.
Then, after Sergey Karjakin’s pro-war outbursts led to his stunning ouster from the field on account of building the game to disrepute, an extra invitation became available to the highest-rated non-invited player – as long as they have played the requisite amount of recent high-level games. That wasn’t the case for Ding Liren, who eventually had to work his way through a marathon domestic competition to make the count.
The narrow escapes continued in Madrid, as the 2023 Candidates Tournament turned out to be an event like no other. Normally, the eight-player round-robin event’s winner is the only one who gets to celebrate, earning the right to challenge the title holder. However, Magnus Carlsen declined to defend his title for the sixth time, meaning Ding Liren’s runner-up finish earned him an opportunity to compete for the world championship title against the event winner and previous challenger Ian Nepomniachtchi, the #3 player on the rankings list earlier in the year, though they would swap places during the build-up to the match.
It remains to be seen how (or if) FIDE, the world chess federation, will reform the match format heading into the future. It is already known that the 2024 Candidates Tournament will be similar to this year’s affair, pitting eight of the world’s best players against one another in a double round-robin format, with the winner earning the right to challenge Ding Liren.
As the loser of the world championship match, Nepomniachtchi is already confirmed for the event, with a chance for an unprecedented, unlikely and unwanted threepeat in the qualification bout. He will be joined by the winner of the 2023 FIDE Circuit, the top three finishes in the Chess World Cup 2023, the top two finishes in the FIDE Grand Swiss Tournament 2023, and the highest-rated eligible player in January 2024.
